• The New York Times , Friday, June 20, 2008 10:15 AM

Lenovo, the Chinese company that bought IBM's personal computer business in 2005, plans to use its Olympics campaign as a launching pad for its brand, which had once played understudy to the IBM name. It is the only Chinese company having a worldwide sponsorship for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Although Lenovo is not trying to hide its Chinese roots, it will not be making direct mention of its heritage in advertising running in the U.S., according to Glen Gilbert, Lenovo's vp for brand management. Rather, it wants to position Lenovo as a global brand and highlight the quality of its computers.

Lenovo refers to itself on its Web site as a "global company with executive offices" in Beijing, Singapore and North Carolina. In 2003, the company dropped its previous English name -- the Legend Group -- which it had been called since soon after its inception in 1984. It chose Lenovo as a distinctly non-Chinese name, appending the first syllable of "legend" to the Latin word "novo," meaning new.

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