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FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog

June 9, 2006

Innovation That Matters

A new day at the 2006 Innovative Marketing Conference at the Columbia Business School, presented by Corante and the Center on Global Brand Leadership.

Our first session is a presentation by Deepak Advani CMO of Lenovo. Encouragingly in talking about the Lenovo brand and marketing Deepak has emphasized a fundamental focus on the product i.e. delivering the brand promise is a far greater priority than communicating the brand promise. Deepak talks about “innovation that matters” making the ThinkPad better by investing in meaningful innovation and design – high quality and reliability as well as emphasizing customer service as a differentiator. These are themes that are consistent with our discussion yesterday about developing customer centric products and services.

An interesting aside – Lenovo plans to deliver executive seminars and insights in conjunction with business schools and business media that help other executives understand how Lenovo manages a global multi-cultural business. The rationale is to use these activities to build awareness of the Lenovo brand – an innovative approach to “guerilla marketing” to the business sector.