Advertising and Marketing

A failed viral ad: the Lenovo red laptop girl

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On 24 April, just before the May Day holiday, a post titled "Hunting for the Red Laptop Girl for seven days without eating or drinking" was published at the Soho Digital Community.

The thread, which has accumulated 2,586 replies and 2,157,856 clicks to date, consists of candid snapshots of a pretty girl whom the photographer is stalking. Lenovo's new ideaPad U110 laptop, in a fashionable red color, appears in practically every picture.

But some bloggers criticized the campaign, calling it a fake cooked up by Lenovo. They also judged it a failed online promotion.

Hecaitou wrote on his blog:

Maybe the girl has tough biceps and has no idea what a "laptop bag" is. And because the "peeper" photographer was equipped a top-level camera, the photos were so clear that people quickly saw through them and recognized the post as Lenovo's online promotion campaign. So what if they saw through them—the problem was that this operation didn't raise up any tide online. And even after 28 April, when major websites and BBSs carried out promotions, it didn't make waves.

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There are currently 3 Comments for A failed viral ad: the Lenovo red laptop girl.

Comments on A failed viral ad: the Lenovo red laptop girl

Those photos are really obviously staged. They tried too hard and ended up with something too professional!

It seems to be a pretty high ROI campaign for me. North or 2MM clicks, and 2.5K replies? If you run a traditional campaign this would cost 200K USD or more. Sounds to me like Lenovo spend much less on this viral campaign. Sure it was not perfect. They are trying out a new medium and make some mistakes. If they are smart they will see the negative feedback as well and do it better next time.
Curious about Sam Flemming's take.

No publicity is... failed publicity?

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