The Campaign

In order to boost its image as a brand for the young people and increase the popularity of its smartphones, Lenovo chooses marathon as a starting point to focus on its target users’ lifestyles. LeFun Run is a social application for runners with GPS location services and social sharing function. The GPS records your running route, so you can share your route with other runners around you on Sina Weibo, Tencent Weibo, renren.com and WeChat after you finish running. In addition, the GPS webcast broadcasts these ordinary people’s marathons in real-time for other ordinary people to see. Lenovo made use of the most popular microbloggers, experts and opinion leaders on Sina Weibo, the official microblog of Lenovo, the microblog of CCTV sports channel and the marathon events, and personal microblogs of runners to convey to the young people why exercises are necessary and the new concept of social marathon events. Lenovo also worked with the largest online portal websites, video sharing websites and social networking websites targeted at young people to advertise the concept of social sports and encourage more people to join. In the meantime, Lenovo used a new marketing platform WeChat to release information and event photos in order to attract people to the webcast page. By working with the organizing committees, Lenovo sent EDM to all runners participating in the race; Lenovo also used the screens to display the webcast and Lenovo smartphones.

The Brief

Lenovo's aim is to use technology and mobile Internet for marathon to become a sport that everyone can participate in anywhere they would like. At the same time, Lenovo pays attention to those ordinary people who participate in marathons, and we call them doers. This coincides with Lenovo's brand of For Those Who Do. The ultimate goal for Lenovo is to increase its smart phone exposure to showcase product features via this innovative marketing in order to attract young consumers and increase the brand awareness of Lenovo smart phones.

Results

The total cost of the webcast was 10,000 Pounds and the development cost of the APP was 30,000 Pounds. We have achieved over 195,000 PVs and 12,590 responses, and we have captured 1400 kilometers of mileage run by VIP runners. Well-known press covered these events and media articles reported this concept of social sporting. Not only professional sports media like CCTV-5, ELLE and Runner's World were involved, our onsite LED screen and webcast have played very important roles as well.There were 196,112 Weibo items related to LeFun Run, and the APP was downloaded 1,050,000 times. Google's comment on this GPS webcast was "after the webcast, Lenovo is truly a distinguished brand." The founder of a well-known online dating website (baihe.com) Mr. Mu Yan said that “the most attractive part of this event is the webcast, very interesting.”

Execution

Lenovo marathon GPS webcast 2012 took place in the Beijing International Marathon on November 25, 2012, the Shanghai International Marathon on December 2, 2012 and the Xiamen International Marathon on January 5, 2013. On the Lenovo marathon webcast page, all users can trace the location of runners with LeFun Run app on through satellite maps, see their photos and vote for them online. All GPS captured blogs along the route were integrated into this page, where runners, spectators and internet users shared with one another what they thought about the race. From that moment on, marathon was not just about African athletes pushing hard for the finish line as shown live on TV or accidents reported by traditional media. The small interesting and moving stories about ordinary people that happened during the race were presented.

The Situation

Most media and the general public find out information about marathons when athletes break world records or when accidents happen. As social media and smart devices develop continuously, there are more ways to watch and participate in sports. Purely watching sports on TV can no longer satisfy the audience, people would like to participate and share more. Lenovo takes on this opportunity to build an innovative brand image: LeFun Run, a social platform designed for marathon runners.

The Strategy

LeFun Run is a social application for runners with GPS and social sharing functions. LeFun Run uses Sina Weibo as the platform to build an integrated website to track running routes and data based on LBS technology. Runners participating in marathons only need to have their cell phones and the application on in order for netizens to see their performance on the website because the LeFun Run GPS can capture location data and put in on the map of the integrated website.