Reaching out to those who #ThinkFirst

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Since it launched earlier this year, I’ve had a lot of fun working on Lenovo’s latest campaign for the soon to be released ThinkPad X1 range, the latest iteration of the historic 23 year old ThinkPad brand. The brief was exciting. Lenovo wanted to reach the ‘progressives’ of this world, the people that push to explore, solve and imagine; the people that continually innovate, and look to the future asking ‘what’s next?’ But at the same time, show them how the new ThinkPad X1 range could help them achieve their goals and ambitions.

In order to do this brief justice, we didn’t just want to talk about the products; we wanted to look past the machine and focus on the people that have helped make the ThinkPad the product it is today.

So how did we go about this? We first teased the audience by tipping our hats to the ThinkPads of the past, remembering how it all started. Enter the ThinkPad 700C from 1992.



We then kicked off the campaign by saying hello to the latest and greatest ThinkPad of them all – the all-new X1 range.




With the X1 range receiving rave reviews, our next step was to release two hero videos featuring Lenovo’s Chief Design Officer, David Hill and Author of ‘The Dark Net’, Jamie Bartlett. These videos aimed to explore the question ‘what’s next?’ and how they see the world around them changing the way we approach our future.






ThinkPad and the Future with Jamie Bartlett, author of “The Da…When creating the NEW ThinkPad X1 range, we were inspired by future thinkers. Jamie Bartlett is an author that believes the future lies with the creators, the innovators and the thinkers of the Dark Net.

Posted by Lenovo on Wednesday, 9 March 2016





We turned to some of the world’s most creative thinkers for support, including beatboxer and World Looping Champion Shlomo, photographer and Reddit viral sensation Kyle Thompson, and 3D graffiti artist Replete. Using long form social posts, we showcased authentic stories that show the thought process, methods, inspirations and focus demonstrated by our ThinkPad users.

Shlomo

@shlomobeatbox – Beatboxing artist, technologist, composer and ThinkPad user. (2/3) ‘Technology is a love hate relationship with me, I feel like it’s a member of my dysfunctional family. It’s led me to some of my favourite creative discoveries, but I’ve also spent so much of my life banging my head against the laptop or whatever, trying to make something work haha… But I only really started working with technology properly after working with Björk and a rudimentary loop pedal, it was really limited with what it could do, and I actually found the limitations quite inspiring in a way because I basically worked out every single thing I could do, including all the glitches and things, and the bugs that weren’t supposed to be there. I worked them into a song and worked the machine the hardest it could possibly be worked. In a way, those limitations end up pushing you into creative places you wouldn’t usually have gone otherwise.’ —- We used the same methodology as Shlomo to create the NEW ThinkPad X1 range – pushing the boundaries of technology to breaking point in pursuit of perfection. Tell us how you push your ThinkPad to the limit? #ThinkFirst

A photo posted by Lenovo (@lenovo) on




Kyle Thompson

“I’m definitely more of a quiet person, I’m more introspective with things and I think that that’s kind of part of the reason why I started shooting self-portraits. I would just go by myself and shoot myself with a tripod and a timer. So i would definitely say that I am more of a quiet person. But I feel like photography has made me more outgoing and less self-conscious because it has forced me to go out and forced me to do things I would do, and be in uncomfortable, weird or awkward situations. I really hope that people are able to look at my images and feel something about them. I hope people enjoy them, and try and relate to them, there is a lot of emotional context in my images and I put a lot of myself into it so it’s always nice to get that feedback and response.” @kylethompsonphoto – Photographer, Artist and ThinkPad user. —— The NEW ThinkPad X1 range was created around our iconic heritage design. But don’t let it’s understated design fool you – under it’s ultra lightweight carbon fiber body lies a powerful Intel Core i7 processor. Show us how ThinkPad obsessed you are? #ThinkFirst #Selfie

A photo posted by Lenovo (@lenovo) on




Replete


The team here enjoyed putting this campaign together, and we met some really cool people along the way who are pushing the boundaries of creativity to the max. We’ve had a great response from the social community, and hopefully we’ve inspired some people to actually do ‘that thing’ they’ve always wanted to do, but not yet made the leap to try and achieve it.