• NY Times, Wednesday, April 12, 2006 12:15 PM

Chinese computer maker Lenovo is surprising industry observers in its haste to jettison the world-famous IBM brand name from its products. Lenovo bought IBM's personal computing business for $1.75 billion in December 2004 in a deal that would allow the company the rights to use the IBM name for five years, which most marketing experts expected them to do because of the strength of the name. But since Lenovo took over the business May 1, the company's advertising and marketing efforts have excluded the IBM name almost entirely from all of its commercial messages. For example, the four television spots Lenovo ran during the Winter Olympics never mentioned IBM. The only connection remaining is the IBM logo that still adorns Lenovo's ThinkPad line of laptop computers. "I would have held onto the IBM brand longer and leveraged it more," said Doug Gladstone, chief executive of Brand Content Advertising, an advertising and communications firm based in Boston. "If you have an icon brand, you don't just let it disappear. What's the rush?" Lenovo executives defend the brand-building strategy, claiming that with the IBM acquisition, Lenovo is now a global PC powerhouse, with $13 billion in revenue from more than 60 countries.

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