Zzzzzz…Oh, was that a Tagline?
May 18, 2007 4 Comments
The Wall Street Journal ran an article on Thursday about Lenovo’s new campaign to sell the Thinkpad laptop (Lenovo purchased the PC business from IBM a while back).
The thrust of the campaign is to show that the Thinkpad is tough and durable. OK, that’s a workable angle, I guess – although I wonder if that particular issue tops the list of concerns and aspirations for the majority of laptop buyers. But be that as it may…
Here’s the campaign tagline: “From the world’s best engineers come the world’s best engineered PCs” Zzzzzzzz….
Do people really want to own a PC because of engineering abstractions? Or because of how it looks, feels, runs applications, and makes me look when I use it?
That tagline is too long, too cold, and too narrow. For a certain small sub-group, it will have some appeal, but it’s DOA as far as aspiration and memorability (by the way, I should note that I’ve always loved Thinkpads. I don’t have one currently, but I’ve used a number of models in the past, and found them to be superb machines!)
What would I do differently? I’d use a simpler concept that can be applied broadly across many themes. For instance:
More
One word, but it says it all regarding Thinkpads. More features. More durability. More value for your money. And, yes, it prepares the buyer for the idea that you’ll pay more also. If I’m going to want a computer, I want…more. Not engineers.
(for my take on “engineer” advertising, in particular relating to cars, here is a previous post).
What do you think? Is engineering a good angle? How would you market Thinkpads?
(image credit)
Connection Agent 
Here’s another option they could’ve used:
“From the world’s best engineers (who write tag-lines on the side but probably shouldn’t) come the world’s best engineered PCs”
It sort of feels like Lenovo were cutting costs and just got their engineers to cover the marketing too.
However, this tag-line doesn’t suffer from certain weaknesses inherent in the short, sharp and catchy ones.
For example, I take some delight in making a mockery of tag-lines.
Lenovo’s is less susceptible to the kind of mockery on the site I linked to.
What? No rebuttal? How disappointing 😦
Yeah … what a waste of a GREAT product name!
Surely there is a perfect connection between the word THINK and the generation of IDEAS. A simple tagline that connects the experience of using a ThinkPad with the ability to OUTTHINK your competition would make me take a second glance.
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