Bangalore is Lenovo's marketing hub

After emerging as the leading global destination for investments in the IT & ITeS sectors, Bangalore is now pioneering another offshore business opportunity for MNCs. The Chinese PC maker Lenovo has set up its global marketing hub in Bangalore, a testimony to the city's skills in advertising and marketing, to serve the global market.

Within two years of starting its operations in India after acquiring the PC business of IBM, Lenovo has identified Bangalore to drive its global marketing initiatives. Its hub in Bangalore for this purpose will manage and track the effectiveness of the company's marketing strategy across the world.

"We have one of the strongest marketing teams in India. Probably, our Indian team is one of the best creative teams in the entire operation. We have experience in India on building consumer brands from scratch. By setting up the global hub here, we will now leverage the marketing talents available in India," said Deepak Advani, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Lenovo.

The marketing hub, set up by the company in Bangalore, is spearheaded by the Lenovo India marketing team. The hub, which presently has 70 professionals, including 50 creative specialists from Ogilvy & Mather, Lenovo's global media partner, will gradually scale up operations depending upon the quantum of works it handles.

Rahul Agarwal, vice president - marketing, Lenovo India, will head the global marketing hub, apart from overseeing the company's marketing in India. He will report to Advani. The company will shortly appoint a new marketing head for Lenovo India. Piyush Pandey, chairman of O&M India, will lead his team for the Lenovo operation.

The initial focus of the hub will be to formulate marketing strategies and create marketing deliverables for print and online. However, the hub will not focus much on television advertisement initially with the exception of China and India.

The company aims to use the hub to develop creative work in close partnership with the local marketing leadership in different countries. The hub will track the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns launched by the company around the world. It will also advise the marketing teams, in each of the countries the company operates, to reuse assets it had created earlier for a similar campaign.

"We operate in more than 60 countries across the world. The local teams in those countries have a tendency to go to the local agency for their marketing deliverables, including advertisement and brochures. So there is not much sharing of IP happening across different countries. Now, they will come to the hub for their marketing requirements," said Advani. This will help the company in customising the existing assets and reusing them instead of recreating assets.

The company's marketing heads from different countries will visit Bangalore for regular interaction with the members of the marketing hub and give their local insights on different advertisement campaigns.

The Lenovo-O&M team, which started functioning from June, has already created 100 marketing deliverables. According to the company, the level of localisation of advertisement content will vary from country to country.

The company has put countries like India, China and Japan in a different segment, where the level of customisation of marketing deliverables will be little higher than in countries like the US, the UK and Australia.