”Do you want to be a metal song writer?” That’s the question we sent to tech journalists around the world. The offer was to make metal songs of their Legion computer reviews. Some of them said yes and we took their reviews and ran straight into the studio and produced songs, videos and even a full album. These videos were then sent back to the journalists which wrote new even better Lenovo reviews. With limited budget and an unexpected approach to product advertising we managed to create a PR buzz that entertained tech newsrooms and gamers all over the globe.

Gaming is a very tough and competitive industry for brands with an audience that is extremely selective. The way forward is to find creative ways to reach through to them that isn't considered as advertising or paid for. With our limited resources and budget, we aimed to create awareness and activation online around Lenovo’s gaming equipment ‘Legion’ on our market, true to the brand values “Different is better”. The target audience was young gamers 18-30 yrs.

Lenovo believes that different is better. This is our concept and it means we make advertising worth spreading and talking about. So to promote their new line of gaming products, it was natural to look for unexplored routes. The target audience (young gamers) prefers reviews and recommendations before traditional product advertising, so we thought why not make entertainment out of reviews?

Our way of different was to use the reviews and have a metal band record six new songs with honest lyrics about premium Lenovo products. The songs became heavy metal videos with product placements. And as it turned out, heavy-metal-product-review-videos got a warm welcome from media all over the globe.

With Lenovo's brand promise ”Different is better” in the back of our head we went all in on product reviews when creating this PR-driven activation.

Our strategy was to reach young gamers on the sites where they look for information with content that stands out from anything they're used to seeing. And with that share it with their like minds. That meant we had to create something that would have the cunningness in order to end up on the tech-sites in the first place.

Our idea was to take reviews from the most trusted sources and make them into something absolutely crazy. We started out by asking for some of the most popular tech journalists permission to use their Lenovo-reviews for advertising. With their blessing, we then recorded a full album of aggressive metal songs with the honest lyrics borrowed straight from the reviews. The songs were then presented with music videos where product placement and metal mayhem strangely took place side by side.

Our strategy to reach right under the nose of our target group - through the credible tech sites online- was then executed. The videos were posted back to the journalists responsible for the reviews, which they then couldn't help themselves from writing yet again about to their readers. And they spread from there.

Videos were sent to ManofMany.com, Mobil.se and The Verge. Shared voluntarily. Also through Lenovo Sweden’s social media channels.

Isolated results measured in this campaign:

Media reach 162 million

Earned media 1,3 million

+ 100 articles (mostly connected to a gaming audience)

Metal Reviews is part of our 'Different is better' concept, which, throughout the last fours years, have taken Lenovo Legion from an unknown gaming brand in the Nordics to market leader in both Desktop and Laptop. Market share Sweden: 32% and 32%, Finland: 16% and 26,5%

Creative idea and management 30.000 EUR

Video production 15.000 EUR

Music production 5.000 EUR

Post production 10.000 EUR

The overall budget was 60.000 EUR