AdWeek published a great story today on Lenovo's social media efforts surrounding the brand's Olympic sponsorship. David Churbuck, vp of global Web marketing at Lenovo, chimes in with some words of wisdom. From AdWeek:
In keeping with the ethos of the social Web, Lenovo is not hosting the blogs on its own site. Most athletes either had their own sites or established them for this project. Lenovo is adding distribution by highlighting the blogs on its Web site at www.lenovo.com/voices.Lenovo has asked the participating athletes to show a "Lenovo 2008 Olympics Blogger" badge on their sites. Most have done so, said Churbuck. It isn't asking for any mention of Lenovo products, he added.
"I don't want to be in the position of telling them what to write," he said. "It's their blog, they can do what they want."
The blogging program is complemented with a Facebook effort that lets users virtually identify themselves with their country's teams. Federated Media and Citizen Sports created country applications users can add to their profiles. So far, more than 100,000 have been downloaded.
"A brand like Lenovo working within Facebook is interesting because that's the nut that a bunch of people are trying to crack," said Jeff Ma, CEO of Citizen Sports. "Most brands and agencies don't even know how to advertise on Facebook. There's still a lot of education."
Check out the referenced Facebook app here.


