There is a lot of talk about how Chinese brands have been featured in Transformers Dark of the Moon from drinks, apparel and electronic goods.
Most notable among them all was the PC maker Lenovo famous for their Thinkpad line whose TEdge Plus laptop is actually a Transformer itself.
The character that the laptop transform into is one of the Autobot named Brains.
It’s an interesting marketing effort on the part of Lenovo, as the company’s senior marketing communication manager, Song Qi explained:
Product placement in Transformers: Dark of the Moon is part of our global branding strategy and a big step towards our further international expansion.
This film really resonates with Chinese audiences as many people that grew up watching the Transformers cartoons also represent the ideal ThinkPad customer.
Didi Zhang, the entertainment and marketing director of Ogilvy & Mather Beijing, noted the importance of integrating the product into the story:
From the start, we didn’t want the ThinkPad Edge Plus to be obtrusive or distracting; our goal was to make it relevant to the movie so that it would be memorable to viewers.
Indeed China has a pretty intense love-affair with the Transformers franchise, and evidence of this is springing up in cities around the country — namely in Wuhan and in Changchun.
As much as I like the idea of a laptop Transformer, I can’t help but wish that Soundwave, the deep-voiced cassette deck Decepticon, had made it back into the film in his original form.
But I guess these things have to be modernized, and bringing in a laptop character does make sense. Check out Lenovo’s promo video featuring Brains below.
Transformers dark of the Moon is out for Chinese screening now. Spot Brains if you are enjoying the flick.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Xv8xP_sW4[/youtube]
– pennolson
