Lenovo global chief marketing officer Deepak Advani (pictured) told Media that, while the review does not currently involve agency proposals, a review of the company’s global media relationship with MindShare remained a possibility.
“At least for the time being we’re not going to open it up, and I am not openly inviting proposals from other agencies,” said Advani. “But we’ll see how it goes.”
A source pointed out that the challenge for Lenovo lay in optimising a relatively low media spend, compared to competitors that include Dell and HP.
“They have a limited consumer offering,” said a source. “Given the limited resources, how do you put it against the right things?”
Advani added that Lenovo is working with MindShare on the current review, which looks to optimise the company’s media spend.
“It’s a big area of focus,” he said. “Basically I’m taking another look at the number of countries where my media dollars are spread. Some countries have done a much better job of optimising the media spend, through long-term commitments and strategic buys. We’re trying to replicate that globally.”
“It’s at the stage of setting processes which will put direct investment in the right areas,” said MindShare Asia-Pacific CEO Ashutosh Srivastava. “Once this is over, though, most clients would then look at how they are engaging with their agencies.”
Lenovo has already, said Advani, completed the process for its online spend, which is now centralised out of the US. “We’ve done away with local buying,” said Advani. “Now we work with global partners and buy media on their properties.” He is hoping to implement a similar strategy for offline media, which is handled globally by MindShare.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is have a global strategy which determines markets and media, but when we do the media buying, that has to be local,” he explained.
The development comes almost a year after Lenovo decided to hub its global advertising operations out of Bangalore. Advani pointed out that the initiative had, so far, proved successful, and that the company would now aim to oversee data and analytics from the Bangalore hub.
“We’re measuring reach, response, leads and things like that - and we’re going to leverage that globally,” he said. “It’s something we haven’t done a really good job of so far.”
