Lenovo's bid change is only the tip of the iceberg, behind which is the transformation of Lenovo Group. This IT company, which has gone through 19 years, has experienced a complicated process from legend to Lenovo, and then to brand transformation and promotion of "as long as you want", which can be regarded as a vivid case of MBA course. Lenovo, repackaged by Lenovo, finally found the feeling of a middle-aged man with "taste, stability, care and strategic vision".
Legendary fatigue
Legend has it that Lenovo is going to change. Although this logo is deeply rooted in China, it has also deeply touched thousands of Lenovo employees.
Yang, president and CEO of Lenovo, used this sentence to express Lenovo's determination to change its brand.
Tracing back to the origin of this logo has become a hot topic for brand researchers. 1 984165438+1October1200,000 yuan,1/person started the dream of "association", and the name at that time was "New Technology Development Company of Institute of Technology, China Academy of Sciences". 1985, Lenovo brand was born with the launch of Lenovo Hanka, which is the first Hanka product with Lenovo function. 1988, Lenovo opened in Hong Kong, adopting the English name Legend. Lenovo became the company name for the first time.
Liu Chuanzhi said that when Lenovo was founded and named Lenovo, Lenovo was still in the stage of making a living, and the issue of "internationalization" was completely ignored.
However, with the development of the company, "internationalization" has become the dream of Lenovo for two generations, and the price of changing the standard is inevitable. Yang's explanation of "international brand" is that in three to five years, 25%-30% of Lenovo's sales will come from overseas markets, but today only 5% of Lenovo's revenue comes from overseas. To achieve this goal, Lenovo first needs to eliminate brand barriers. Lenovo has too many registrations in overseas markets, and its development abroad must have a trademark that can be legally protected and legally sold.
? The dilemma of transformation
In fact, Lenovo executives knew from 200 1 that the brand logo must be changed. In May, 2002, the brand conversion team was established, with Yang Ren as the team leader. Five sets of alternative handover schemes have been provided internally, but in subsequent inquiries, it was found that four of them were registered in different countries. Logo finally fell on two words-the association I created. Lenovo consists of Le and novo -le is prefixed with Legend, and novo means innovation in Latin. Yang hopes Lenovo can launch its own name all over the world.
With the switching of brand identity, in Yang's eyes, Lenovo today is taking the third step. He combed the context of Lenovo's development like this: "Take the trade route before the 1990s; From 1990 to 2000, we worked hard to build our own brand and fight our way out in the competition with international brands. The company's goal of 200 1 to 20 10/0 is to reach the scale of 10 billion US dollars. " With a little heavy glory given by the outside world, today's Lenovo has once again reached the crossroads of transformation.
Yang stressed: "Being among the top 500 companies in the world, if you only do PC business, IT is obviously not enough, and you must diversify in the IT field. We divide our business scope into three major circles-information terminal products and background products that provide infrastructure for network and IT services. " Obviously, Lenovo needs a wider runway to accommodate its complex products and services, which is a more reasonable brand structure.
Through years of accumulation, although Lenovo has gained more than 90% popularity in China market, a strange phenomenon has appeared in recent years. Marketing expenses are increasing year by year, but in the eyes of customers, Lenovo's image is actually very chaotic.
In order to get out of the "brand dilemma", Lenovo entrusted FutureBrand, a Hong Kong brand management consulting company, to conduct in-depth research on brand issues for more than two years. The brand management consulting company visited 2,800 consumers and more than 700 corporate customers, and conducted 6 visits in 5 overseas countries. Li Lan, general manager and assistant president of Lenovo's brand promotion department, said: "The survey found that Lenovo's past brand connotation was not clear enough and its image was not unified enough. For example, if you ask what Lenovo's brand stands for, you get many answers; Secondly, there is a lack of unified brand strategy guidance, and the utilization efficiency of marketing resources is not high; Third, the structure is chaotic. Lenovo has more than 40 brands and lacks an overall structure. "
In this regard, Lenovo entrusts a research company to select a set of characteristics according to a rule to see which characteristics are closer to Lenovo's or consumers' views on Lenovo, and then according to a complicated calculation such as ranking score, it obtains the four top characteristics of Lenovo brand-quality professional service, honor, integrity and innovation.
It is not enough to clarify the connotation of the brand. In order to solve the problem of chaotic brand structure, Yang finally decided to adopt a single brand structure among various alternatives. First of all, there must be a main brand association. There are different business groups to support the main brand. Some technologies and services will adopt sub-brands. Therefore, under the sub-brands, product sequences and product names will be used. What specifications will be adopted at each level will be more efficient, and many meetings will be avoided in order to make a decision.
In the next seven years, Lenovo will shoulder the heavy responsibility. Lenovo has a long way to go before it ranks among the top 500 enterprises in the world. In the future, Lenovo's road to going overseas is also full of unknown risks. Yang said: "I have never understood the meaning of transcendence as profoundly as I do today. We have to expand so many businesses, even those with a very large span. This is very difficult. This is not something you can do if you want to. This is not something that a few people want to do. It is even necessary to change the genes of the entire enterprise in some aspects. "
Entering overseas, owning a legal brand is only the first step. Until today, Lenovo executives have not given the outside world a clear timetable and specific steps. Both financial obstacles and marketing obstacles need Yang to solve. Both Liu Chuanzhi and Yang believe that Lenovo's core competitiveness lies in management. Although PC products and technologies are internationally competitive, they have not yet become the core competitiveness of the company.
Driven by Lenovo, the company's main slogan "As long as you want" in the next two years has also been exposed recently. "'As long as you want' will become the promotion slogan of Lenovo in the next two years. In the past, internal employees complained that they were bound by creativity. Now it is' as long as you want', you can continue to innovate. " In the past, every promotion word of Lenovo had to be discussed at the president's meeting several times, but only the idea of "as long as you want" was passed at one time. Yang made a decision on the spot and decided to invest in this promotion project for two years.
Looking back at the brand logo, it will be difficult. "Without the support of business and products, without the dribs and drabs of all employees, the brand is meaningless. The brand is logo plus word of mouth, not a simple logo. " Yang Jie, marketing manager of Lenovo Consumer IT Group, made this judgment: "When people think of McDonald's, they think of happiness and family sharing, not a hamburger and a logo. How to undertake the company's brand strategy in business is very important. "
Behind the trend of collective rebranding
In the process of the transfer of the world manufacturing center to China, there is a phenomenon that cannot be ignored. China enterprises are accelerating the pace of entering overseas. From the dazzling overseas expansion of Haier, a home appliance giant, to the relatively cautious exploration of IT manufacturers such as Lenovo and Jinshan, a wave of going international will reach a peak in the near future.
The two are bound to collide. In order to reduce costs, foreign enterprises will move to factories in China, which will bring advanced management experience and production lines to China. When domestic enterprises go abroad, they will also challenge their limits in the stormy waves. Living water coming out and entering are rare wealth, which will accelerate the docking of the two.
The enterprise that goes out has changed its trademark, which is just a coat. Lenovo changed the standard and Huaqi information changed the standard. In fact, many enterprises have to face more things after changing the standard. Chinese enterprises should be in line with the international market as soon as possible in brand concept. The discussion of brand in the book Profit Model is quite enlightening. The book says that decades ago, the superiority of a brand meant quality and reliability. The emergence of government supervision, better business organization, global competition and total quality control makes consumers trustworthy. Today, as companies introduce brands to the world, expand to different product lines, and extend from manufacturing process to mixed mode of production and service, they are also shifting from emphasizing brand significance to relying less on the special performance of products, providing customers with more internal benefits of self-confirmation value. Benetton is not only a better shirt, but also represents the wearer's better attitude towards the world. Nike is not only a pair of shoes to help you run faster in the morning, it also represents the courage to stand up, meet challenges and control things.
This invisibility may attract more attention from enterprises.