Lenovo has hired UK-based independent agency Total Media to handle the relaunch of its handset brand Moto across EMEA.
The Chinese tech firm acquired Motorola Mobility from Google in 2014, and last year announced plans to refresh the brand with a return of its famed ‘Hello Moto’ tagline.
It has now appointed Total Media – which describes itself as a “behavioural planning media agency” – to handle strategy, planning and buying across offline and online media channels across EMEA, starting with a focus on the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
The initial focus will be to promote the Moto Z and Moto Mods ‘modular handsets’, which Lenovo unveiled last year. Rumours that the brand will revive its popular Razr flip phone – which sold 130 million units a decade ago – have been denied.
Thomas Laranjo, managing director at Total Media, said: “We used our behavioural planning expertise to identify people who are curious and open to innovation and therefore more likely to embrace the Moto Z.
“We identified this curious behaviour online and then applied the insights to our media targeting rational, using a mix of high impact media, reviews and endorsements to help educate them about the benefits of Moto’s bleeding edge, proprietary technology.”
Speaking to M&M Global last year, Lenovo worldwide executive brand director Jo Moore said the return of the ‘Hello Moto’ endline has required a fresh approach for the company. “Not so much towards younger in age and demographic,” she said, “but more of mind and spirit and the never-standing-still mind-set.”
Moore added she is concerned that automation has made life too easy for agencies and marketers: “We’re losing the amazing, smart, insightful planners and strategists in agencies and the amazing creative geniuses that have made those creative leaps in creativity because it’s digital.
“I think it’s a shift and the creative has been devalued. But then the question is, ‘What will technology mean for agencies of the future?’ and it’s up to agencies to fight back and put more value back on those amazing pieces of creative work that shapes brands around the world,” she said.
