Boxing clever with a 360° market view

A marketing strategy for Lenovo, the world’s largest vendor of PCs

Case study

As the world’s largest vendor of PCs, and with operations in over 60 markets, Lenovo is an industry leader, but not one to rest on its laurels. With aggressive growth targets and several years without market-wide insights into commercial end-buyers, Lenovo wanted a better strategy to deliver knockout blows in an increasingly competitive market.

Lenovo needed a worldwide segmentation that would support targeting, brand positioning and comms, product design and portfolio management. The solution had to reflect all businesses, from the smallest to the biggest, across all industries and in markets as different as the US and India, China and Germany. Where to start?

"The senior and experienced Incite team distilled a huge amount of data and information into a form that was digestible and actionable. Incite helped us plan and deliver a critical piece of work for the Lenovo business, which continues to inform and support our ongoing operations in the B2B market."

Steve Gilbert, Global Director, PCG Commercial Marketing at Lenovo

While our buyer research took us to eight key markets across four continents, we started closer to home, interviewing Lenovo stakeholders across marketing, sales and strategy to understand their needs and expectations. Only then did we embark on our qual and quant conversations with decision-makers and influencers in small, medium and large enterprises, our analysis being complemented by third-party market information. With data in hand, our combined teams met to pull apart our in-going hypotheses and select a practical solution.

The outcome was a detailed breakdown of the market, with key segments profiled and sized. We provided clarity on how to reach the targets and deliver them focused messages and relevant product offers.

Pulling together this many inputs and coming out the far end with a well-informed and focused marketing strategy is no mean feat. It requires big picture thinking, an eye for detail, persistence and pragmatism. Happily, our integrated approach gave Lenovo the direction they needed for the fight ahead.