Chandrika Jain, Director- Marketing, Lenovo India talks about how the marketing function can wield a huge influence on the way a company carries out its sustainability efforts, and one such example is Lenovo's 'human-centred innovation' campaign currently running in India.

Can you take us through the human-centred innovation campaign Lenovo has launched? What is it about?

What is your take on the evolved landscape of the workplace post-pandemic, and its impact on the brand? What learnings did Lenovo have from the two years of the pandemic?
I think the biggest learning for all of us, keeping personal learnings aside, was how technology could actually be the enabler in several areas of our lives, while we were all stuck in the pandemic. For tech companies, the pandemic jumpstarted a whole new era wherein the adoption of technology saw a meteoric rise. We see this trend evolve and become a reality, as technology is addressing this requirement in the world today. That obviously had a clear positive impact on how the brand and the business grew. Some of our solutions, called ‘the workplace solution’ is something that we are driving in the whole world, enabling people to work from anywhere, anytime, in the absolute and most seamless fashion that is possible today.

If we look at the pre-pandemic vs post-pandemic data, Lenovo India’s total revenue had seen a consistent growth with 14.5% year-on-year increase in FY 20-21 (ending March 2021), and 38% year-on-year increase in FY 21-22 (ending March 2022). This was supported by nearly doubling the volume of manufactured PCs and smartphones in India, while significantly increasing local manufacturing of tablets.

What’s the current marketing mix for Lenovo India for its recent campaigns?
In the context of this campaign, it spoke more to the B2B audience because of the kind of technology that we were bringing to the fore. The campaign mix was largely a seamless integration of digital and traditional, we had both digital and social operating along with Out-of-home (OOH) and TV in some of the major cities in India.
In terms of the split itself, we saw a 60-40 split in this campaign because of the audience, its content type, the objective that we had- which was about building awareness with a larger audience on the kind of impact that technology can have. 60% was dedicated to print, TV and OOH, while 40% of it went to the digital medium. But that split is not a fair split anymore because actually each of these mediums has to work in tandem with each other.

Can you share the marketing spends and strategies ramped up for this particular campaign and for the coming year?
In terms of marketing spends, Lenovo has been working very hard and spending a substantial amount to build its brand for the last two to three years. The human-centred campaign is our effort in the same direction. Going forward into next year, we are hoping to see similar investment in the brand. In terms of strategies, we are still working through our plan for next year. But there are quite a few aspects. One is that we see the market redefining itself post-pandemic. I feel like the need to fortify the brand next year will be even stronger. So, that's going to inform how we build our spends, and decide our investment for the next year.

The second aspect that is becoming a challenge for marketers like us, is that India is a very crowded media landscape. So, how are we going to get the right attention in media next year? Do we invest in innovation? Do we pick specific mediums or explore newer mediums that are coming into the market?

The third aspect is more consolidated and stronger approaches, while making hard choices.

Do you see the current market outlook with the global inflation slowdown witnessed in tech companies impacting the brand, especially in India? What according to you would be the effect on AdEx because of this?
Globally, we are seeing a slowdown, but in comparison, India as a market for Lenovo is still continuing to do positively well. To put it in perspective, the market is seeing what I would call some level of normalization, especially after what we saw happening during the pandemic.

In times like this, it becomes even more important to fortify the brand, to invest in the brand, to keep the brand top of mind amongst consumers, especially if the market is expected to slow down. So, it is the right time to invest in the brand right now, and I do not see this impacting AdEx right now.

How is Lenovo investing in sustainable design and core business ideologies like diversity, inclusion, and ESG (environmental social governance)?
Sustainability, diversity and inclusion work through every aspect of what we do. So, I'll give you a simple example of Product Diversity – 75% of Lenovo’s products are vetted by inclusive design experts to ensure they work for everyone, regardless of physical attributes or abilities. When we design headphones, we design them for diverse people and cultures across the globe, and the size differs accordingly. Likewise, we have several examples within our product categories itself that speak about inclusion and diversity.

And it doesn't stop there, it's also about our employees. We have several programmes within the Lenovo network that encourages women in leadership.

We all know there's a carbon footprint that is attached to using technology. We are one of the first companies to venture into CO2 offsetting. Last year we started working with all of our B2B partners, providing CO2 offset as a measure within all the products that they bought from us. Similarly, this year we have extended that offer all the way to consumers. So, for every Thinkpad that you bought, CO2 offsetting was worked within the product itself.