Lenovo goes for the weird at the Olympics

Lenovo, the only Chinese company with worldwide sponsorship of the Beijing Olympics, has gotten into the oddvertising swing for its Olympic campaign courtesy of Ogilvy. What? You never heard of Lenovo before? They're the Chinese company that bought IBM's PC business. But it would be hard to tell that from the ads. While most Olympic advertisers (even Budweiser, the all-American, Belgian-owned beer) are going with an "Olympics in China" theme, the one Chinese advertiser has decided to stay as far away from a Chinese connection as possible. Instead, they ran two freaky ThinkPad ads—one that involves an "apology troll," which appears to be a teleporting midget dressed in a fawn costume holding a fruit basket, and another where Japanese sumos invade New York in order to run into a plane shape and then take off. I'm not sure who decided oddvertising, a decent choice for Skittles, was a good idea for a high-involvement purchase like a computer, or why there are only two executions. But I do get why they aren't hyping their Chinese connection in the American advertising. Anyway, let's take a moment to mourn the old troll-free days of computer advertising with 101 vintage computer ads courtesy of Boing Boing.

—Posted by Rebecca Cullers

August 13, 2008 in Cullers | Permalink