The Global SABRE Awards 2012

About 7 years ago, I met Mr. Lee Ting at an event in San Francisco. He was one of the keynote speakers at the forum discussing China market entry strategies among executives and government leaders.  That was just after Lenovo acquired IBM’s personal computing division.  Mr. Ting, a venture capitalist and H-P veteran executive, has been on the Board of Directors at Lenovo.  Thanks to him, as a mentor and great friend of mine, from one connection to another, I’ve got to know many executives and entrepreneurs in China who are building global brands.  And now Lenovo and BlueFocus jointly won a Global SABRE Award for their successful campaign of “Micro Philanthropy 微公益” in the summer of 2011.

Between July 18 and September 22, 2011, there were 41,000 projects submitted, out of which 40 were selected and coached for the final contest, and 17 eventually won.  In total, Lenovo donated RMB 138 million, providing all resources requested for as long as the contestants’ projects were demonstrating progress.   On the popular Chinese micro-blog Sina Weibo, over 1,260,000 posts themed “Do Small in a Big Way” were published. Three-hundred Chinese celebrities volunteered time to promote the cause, including the “Microblog Queen” Yao Chen (who has 22.4 million followers), Wall Street investor Charles Xue and popular intellectual Huang Jianxiang.  More than 800,000 followed the “Do Small in a Big Way” on Sina Weibo microblog, which achieved more than 5 million page views.  Nearly 1,000 print media reports covered Lenovo’s campaign and 136 official media reports praised Lenovo for helping youth turn ideas for making a difference into reality, including Southern Weekly, China’s most influential lifestyle magazine, which made Lenovo’s micro-philanthropy contest its cover story. Meanwhile, People’s Daily, China’s most authoritative official newspaper, published a one-page report on the Lenovo campaign.

 The winning team of BlueFocus with Paul Homles in the middle

Congratulations!  It’s a significant milestone for both companies as Lenovo has become(based on last quarter’s shipping bypassing H-P) the world’s largest PC maker, and BlueFocus aims at global markets after becoming the first publicly listed PR and communications company in China.  The creativity of this program comes from and targets the youth, these amazing young people who are breaking through all boundaries and performing on the global stage.  Technology has made the world flat, and the social media made the speed of development incomprehensible compared to just a decade ago.  Digital and Social Communications are the core of energy for the jet stream of information around the world.  And here in Miami, I met the best of the best in this industry hosted by Mr. Paul Holmes, CEO at the Holmes Group.  Truly it’s one of the best summits I’ve ever been to.   

Here I’d like share a small part of the high spirited Grayling Lecture “The Ethics of Persuasion” delivered by Lord Peter Chadlington, Chairman at Huntsworth, about our people:
“Our profession is an eclectic one.  My generation fell into public relations because they were not very good at anything else – and many of us simply failed at our first choice career.
At the other end of the PR age spectrum, we have today bright, intelligent graduates – many of whom after a general degree have obtained a diploma or even a masters in public relations.
What they lack in experience, they have in spades through person confidence, academic qualifications and innate intelligence.  And we are attracting more and more executives with objective skills with which they can guide even the most seasoned CEO through the ups and downs of his corporate life.”

Photographs by Ralf Rühmeier

The future of communications is digital, mobile, social and global. May this be the first of many Global SABRE Awards for a Chinese campaign that brings public transparency, social responsibility and brand awareness together. Cheers!


 

What's Your Brand?

It is reported that the US presidential campaign cost $6 billion, with over a million ads.  And the election came down to county-by-county results that showed the demographics and votes (blue vs. red) in fine detail. 

The question that came to my mind was this: What corporate brand would run a commercial campaign like the ones in this election, with the massive scale of spending and coverage?   Would any Chief Executive travel through 4 states per day, meeting people and shaking their hands?  And behind the scenes, would analysts look at all points of sales in stores of each county, tune the messaging to the targeted audience, and have forecasts of sales down to the hundreds, tens or single units? 

I was very impressed with Governor Romney in the first debate.  He was well prepared, sharp and  articulate.  Isn't he the perfect role model for the leadership of America?  Doesn't everyone wish to be like him: Successful, financially independent, ethical, and supporting a great family?  Doesn’t the greatest economy in the world deserve someone like him to lead?  It didn’t turn out that way.  In this country, people of color and women are no longer minorities.  And they turned away the perfect candidate.  Was it a mistake?  Do we really just get four more years of the same after all that? Haven't we all suffered one way or the other?  Why didn't we make a change and exercise our rights of democracy?  It all came down to the brutal facts of data, maybe too much data, depending on how you use them for your decisions.  They may betray you in the end when results are not what you wished after all your efforts collecting data.  How often do companies invest in developing and launching products, but miss the expectations? So why don't people buy them even though they know the benefits?

Steve Jobs’ memoir published after his death was one of the top selling books in the world.  He was unique because of his insights.  Somehow he saw the internal motives of consumers and succeeded in selling technology in so many different industries - computer, animated movies, music, telecommunications, and publishing.  Each of us have unique insights.  How do we apply them to our career and life decisions?  That may well be the start of our own brands.  There is only one Steve Jobs and one Apple.  There is also only one of you.

Somehow, these insights need to develop into a product, a service, an offering, or maybe a business.  President Obama built a coalition of African American, Hispanic, young adults and women.  He used the contrast of the middle class versus the wealthy to make Governor Romney almost irrelevant to the majority of people.  That's right.  You have to be innovative to distinguish your product from the others, and that unique appeal should derive from your insights of your targeted audience.  

That leads to the communications, the essential part of any campaign.  If you want people to buy something, you've got to tell a good story, and tell it again, and again, and again.  President Obama was most vulnerable in the first debate because, somehow, he didn't look like he was in the game.  He wasn't there to tell his story. 

When I was at Livescribe, my first start-up experience, I told my story with 5 pencasts that I made myself: 1) Helen's first English Lesson, 2) Teaching my son the Chinese character "rain" by descriptive way of explaining the strokes, 3) an architect's design of a bridge, 4) my son' writing his first rhyme, and 5) my advanced Chinese lesson of a Tang poem.  The point was to show, capture, access and share live content uniquely with handwriting and audio for language learning and creativity.  Many years from now it will still be magical for people to look at the pencasts, especially for my son who had the biggest giggle when he saw the pencast he wrote 4 years ago. I can’t wait for his son to see it.  The authenticity of his handwriting along his voice was just precious.  So why didn’t all parents buy one?

Execution.  Easy to say and hard to do.  Even Governor Romney fell short in the end.  How could he have done better?  I am sure everyone has lots of ideas.  One of the interesting factors is timing.  The other is momentum.  Obviously he lost some momentum in the final week if the campaign when Hurricane Sandy hit the east coast.  Some even said it was "God's will".  Could Livescribe have had more momentum had the iPad not been launched? 

Politician or not, we each have our own identity.  To make it a brand, a great brand big or small, we all have to recognize that with digital and social media, we are not just who we are but what we are perceived to be.  That perception is the driving force for the others' actions.  The more you can connect your authentic self to them and offer value with great insights of their needs, the more relevant you are in this world, and the happier you may be about yourself.  The biggest satisfaction is always when you can give and are well received ...  even paid for, maybe.

Being a strategic brand advocate, I help people and companies evaluate where they are in the product cycle and what actions they can take to enhance their product positioning.  What’s your brand?  What insights and suggestions may you need to make your brand spectacular?