Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

More than 30,000 pieces of equipment including Lenovo desktop and notebook PCs, monitors and servers are supporting the Olympic Games. This hardware helps manage virtually every aspect of the Games, from gathering and storing participant data to displaying the scores. Lenovo equipment supports 56 venues across seven cities for the Beijing Games. And some athletes are using Lenovo ThinkPads to blog about their experiences. It's just one part of the company's strategy to increase worldwide brand awareness.

We spoke to David Churbuck, Lenovo's vice president of global Web marketing, in the latest issue of 1to1 Weekly. Churbuck leads Lenovo's interactive advertising globally, as well as supporting all of its e-commerce divisions and Lenovo's Web operations. He says that The great challenge of Lenovo marketing is to build a new brand around what is essentially a $16 billion start-up. Awareness is the name of the game.

As for online marketing, he explains that customer expectations online have evolved, and the experience is of utmost importance.

It's about looking at the best-in-breed experience that customers are accustomed to everywhere online -- not just among our competitor set. We look at eBay, at Amazon, at discount camera vendors, etc., to try and learn about meeting the needs of the customer. Our Web traffic provides us with the largest focus group we could ask for. We just need to hear what they're telling us.

How does your company approach branding and online marketing? What challenges do you see? And how do you like the Olympics so far?