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Kristy Fair

Media Relations

Relaunching Yoga with the Silhouettes

The Consumer Electronics Show was a major venue for launching Lenovo’s new products every year. We often would announce products months before they were commercially available. So when we secured a ton of coverage on our IdeaPad Yoga 11S convertible laptops, we had to be creative in relaunching them with no new news. Here’s what we did.

We found this idea through being observant of pop culture. At the time, the group the Silhouettes had won America’s Got Talent. We put the flexibility of our Yoga together with the flexibility and creativity of their dancers and came up with our Yoga video. I had so much fun filming this with the dance team at their studio in Denver, CO. The money we paid them for producing this video went to fund the dancer’s college education, so it was a win-win for us all. I even tried it myself:

We ran a contest on social media, asking our fans to suggest names for the video. One one that won – The Yoga 11S. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We rewarded the winner with Lenovo swag .

Launching Lenovo’s Commercial Internet of Things

One of my responsibilities at Lenovo focused on communications for the newly established Commercial Internet of Things (CIoT) group. This incubator group was tasked with creating solutions that combined Lenovo and other technologies into workflow solutions for industries. As part of the group’s first commercial offering for retail, I developed a multi-pronged external communications plan consisting of:

Watch the video.

Storm Chasers Use ThinkPads

As a CSR-related initiative and a way of creating consistent press coverage, we developed a relationship with the Center for Severe Weather Research (CSWR) in Boulder, Colorado. These researchers were profiled on the Discovery Channel’s TV show Storm Chasers. What an incredible opportunity to get Lenovo products placed (no guarantee) on the show without having to pay for product placement. Spoiler alert – yes, they were included in one of the seasons. We donated and outfitted CSWR’s trucks and research center with laptops, desktops, monitors, and hard drives – the full gamut.

We of course captured photos and video for owned content.

We facilitated dozens of media interviews and ride alongs. We did a satellite media tour with local TV stations across the U.S. at the start of tornado season. This gave us a great news hook, and with coaching, our spokesperson, Joshua Worman from CSWR, naturally worked in mention of Lenovo ThinkPads.

We seeded upcoming products with them and got them to field test them. Then we created videos showcasing the durability of our latest and greatest.

And we even brought the DOW (doppler on wheels) to CES and did interviews with the team and journalists at the show. What an incredible partnership.

I was fortunate enough to spend several days in Colorado with the team, waiting, and waiting for storms to pop up across tornado alley. While I struck out (not even an F0), I learned a ton and captured some incredible moments.

What’s a Desktop Got to Do with the World’s Largest Furniture Fair?

On first blush, not much. But, if you take a good look at Lenovo’s Horizon PC (dubbed the coffee table PC), you can start to see the connection. My challenge as the PR lead for product communications at Lenovo was to relaunch a desktop that we previously announced at the Consumer Electronics Show. I was going for something more coverage-wise than stories saying, “hey, Horizon is now on sale.” So I challenged my PR agency to be creative, and together, we came up with this campaign.

The furniture bake off:

  • We put three furniture designers to the test after an open submission process. We gave them $5,000 each to create a unique piece of furniture that represented their take on the Horizon.
  • All three would exhibit at the International Furniture Fair in NYC – an unexpected place for a PC company to show up
  • And they would get PR and social amplification from Lenovo for their creations

Here’s a behind the scenes video we filmed with Input Creative.

And our behind the scenes with Straight Line Designs.

And our behind the scenes with Francois Chambourd.

And gallery of the top three winners who exhibited with us at ICFF.

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