Battery Recall Could Recharge Lenovo
Lenovo received glowing coverage in The Wall Street Journal early this week and then was forced to announce a major battery recall late in the week. Which event will help the company’s long-term performance? The VAR Guy has a surprising answer.
Lenovo missed a huge opportunity early in the week when The Wall Street Journal described how businesses are now deploying secure mobile desktops. The coverage included multiple photos of Lenovo ThinkPad laptops and biometric fingerprint readers (Lenovo has sold 3 million ThinkPads with the devices so far.) Awesome. Wonderful. Only one problem: The logos on the machines all said “IBM” rather than “Lenovo.” It’s time for Lenovo to work much more aggressively to brand the ThinkPads as its own systems.
Now for the bad news that was good news. Lenovo announced plans to recall 2o5,000 notebook batteries because of possible safety concerns. Terrible news, right? Perhaps not. Recalls are expensive. But Lenovo is getting much-needed press coverage across the U.S. Every major story about the recall has mentioned that Lenovo is the world’s third largest PC maker. Funny, but I bet most small business owners didn’t know that before this week.
Lenovo PR has worked aggressively to explain details about the recall. Let’s hope Lenovo’s sales team is working just as aggressively, checking in with existing large customers and also assisting resellers that support small and midsize business owners.