Around the beginning of June, I got a sad note that David Roman would be retiring from Lenovo. He had one of the deepest pedigrees of any chief marketing officer (CMO) I’ve ever worked with (and a lot of success at Lenovo). He was one of the early Apple marketing execs and then moved to […]
Around the beginning of June, I got a sad note that David Roman would be retiring from Lenovo. He had one of the deepest pedigrees of any chief marketing officer (CMO) I’ve ever worked with (and a lot of success at Lenovo). He was one of the early Apple marketing execs and then moved to NVIDIA and HP, where he ran one of the most powerful marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen “The Computer Is Personal Again.” He finally ended up at Lenovo and helped turn a brand no one had heard of into a near household name. ExecRank ranked him 15th among marketing executives across all industries.
This week, I’ve been thinking about marketing and the lack of real creativity in technology marketing of late. Apple seems to just rehash the same old stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty good, but it’s well off the mark that Steve Jobs set when he was alive.
I’d like to revisit some of the more interesting things I watched David do over the years in the hope that someone else can learn from this and restore some of the magic to marketing in tech.
One of the big problems with the technology market is that the way it is structured. Intel and Microsoft tend to get most of the margin. This leaves it up to them to drive demand into the market. Unlike Apple, which keeps the margin to itself, the WinTel (which is fast becoming WinAMD) OEMs don’t have the funding to do the marketing needed to keep funds flowing into this segment.
So they need to come up with creative ways to do a lot with a little.
This was one of the most brilliant, if not the most brilliant, marketing campaigns I’ve ever seen. What Dave and his team at HP did was to take HP’s philanthropic budget and use it strategically to get high-profile advocacy. With “The Computer Is Personal Again,” he went to celebrities. In exchange for those celebrities getting to choose which charity received HP’s money, they advocated HP’s products on the air. Celebrities of the caliber that HP got typically cost in the millions for endorsements, and David Roman got them to do it pretty much for free. This saved HP millions that Roman didn’t have in his budget in the first place.
HP was going to spend the philanthropy money anyway, and each celebrity had their own favorite charity. So HP not only promoted its products, but HP’s spend on this largely went to charities and not celebrities. It not only moved products — it also made the world a better place.
One of the viral videos that Roman’s team created once he went over to Lenovo was of a flying laptop. This was part of a series of videos talking about Lenovo development and innovation. It was done as a joke (no flying laptops were hurt during the filming), but it was incredibly well executed. The video caught a lot of air. Incredibly realistic, the video was shot over a decade ago and still gives me a smile today.
Another amazing commercial was the this commercial that some think is one of the funniest ever made. And who could forget the time Lenovo took on Apple’s foolishly thin MacBook Air. This was a time when Apple was openly making fun of Windows and taking some pretty personal shots at Bill Gates. A lot of us applauded Roman fighting back.
One of the most famous ads Roman ever did was never shown outside of Lenovo, thanks to its legal team. It came at a time when Dell was running a campaign with Steve the Dell Dude.
Now ThinkPad, when it was part of IBM, actually had some incredibly powerful (and funny) ads. Roman needed something that would stand up to this IBM quality, and he wanted to stick it to Dell.
The ad had some folks sitting at the bar talking about how reliable their laptops are. The guy with the ThinkPad drops his on the floor from shoulder height, but the laptop was unbroken. Another guy comes back from the bathroom and asks what they are talking about. A third guy says, “Watch this!” and drops a different laptop. You can hear what sounds like a break and parts going all over the place. The guy whose owned the laptop says something like “Dude, that wasn’t a ThinkPad” with clear reference to Steve the Dell Dude. I understand the Lenovo sales force gave David and his team a standing ovation for that one.
It is kind of sad watching David step down from Lenovo, but he has been running hard. I did exchange email with him after he left. He wanted to spend time with his young grandkids before they grew up, and his job wasn’t allowing him the freedom to do that. I expect he’ll be back in the ranks shortly (grandkids are often a ton more fun in small doses), and I couldn’t recommend him more highly.
I’ll miss seeing him regularly and wish the guy the best of luck. There are so few marketing folks that are willing to take risks these days. It was sad to lose one of the best, but I do expect Dave to come back. I can hardly wait!
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
December 04, 2020
Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 18, 2020
Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
November 10, 2020
FEATURE | By Samuel Greengard,
November 05, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
November 02, 2020
How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 29, 2020
Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
October 23, 2020
The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
October 16, 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
October 07, 2020
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Guest Author,
October 05, 2020
CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science
FEATURE | By Guest Author,
September 25, 2020
Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 25, 2020
Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020
FEATURE | By Cynthia Harvey,
September 22, 2020
NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
September 18, 2020
Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 14, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By James Maguire,
September 13, 2020
IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 11, 2020
Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality
FEATURE | By James Maguire,
September 09, 2020
Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs
FEATURE | By Rob Enderle,
September 05, 2020
The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | By Rob Enderle,
August 14, 2020
As President and Principal Analyst of the Enderle Group, Rob provides regional and global companies with guidance in how to create credible dialogue with the market, target customer needs, create new business opportunities, anticipate technology changes, select vendors and products, and practice zero dollar marketing. For over 20 years Rob has worked for and with companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, Dell, Toshiba, Gateway, Sony, USAA, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Credit Suisse First Boston, ROLM, and Siemens.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
