PHILIP KOTLER 2011-2013

New growth at Nokia

Embattled mobile brand Nokia is hoping that its Lumia smartphone will help extinguish the flames on its infamous “burning platform” that chief executive Stephen Elop referred to in a speech back in February.

Since Elop admitted that Nokia’s lack of momentum was because it “poured gasoline on its own burning platform”, the brand’s marketing and technology teams have focused on new product development in a bid to regain market share from the likes of Apple.

Charmaine Eggberry, Nokia’s senior vice-president of marketing and marketplace activation, is one of the marketers at the forefront of this new strategy. Well-known in the technology world, Eggberry joined from BlackBerry maker RIM in July 2010 and reports to chief marketing officer Jerri DeVard. Eggberry reveals. “The revolution we have gone through is to ’re-architect’ who we’re targeting, the voice we’re talking in, the tonality, the way in which we execute it and the actual creative and advertising, which is a lot brighter and more energetic,” she says, pointing to the brand’s new two-second TV ad teaser format.

Eggberry claims the Lumia range’s social hub and inbuilt music streaming service will be the functions that will revive the brand among this audience. “The number one thing that’s relevant to youth is people - their friends, being in contact,” she says. “So we’ve built the social network People Hub, which is the first thing you see when you access your phone.

“What makes this youthful and relevant is the social experience. The focus groups we showed it to liked that feature the most. It’s very visual and alive.”

But can Nokia, a brand that has been typically favoured by older, more conservative consumers, speak the language of today’s young people? Eggberry says the company’s research and insight department has been exploring the global youth market to help inform Nokia’s strategy.

“If you want to be consumer-centric, the first thing you have to do is talk to consumers. I have been blown away by the consumer research and insights group here.

Refreshed Creativity

Nokia World 2011. Stephen Elop presents the Lumia 800.

Nokia’s new two-second TV “blipverts” were the brainchild of UK head of brand and campaigns Adam Johnson and created in line with the brand’s new youth focus.

“The two-second ads are a media first for mobile brands,” claimed Johnson at Nokia World in London last month. “The last time I checked we had over 500,000 views on YouTube. Twitter has gone nuts. It just shows how much intrigue and desire for understanding there is for Nokia.

“It was a tough sell to convince the powers that be that it was a good thing to do. It was risky, but it is paying off.”

John Nichols, director of marketing UK and Ireland, says the campaign for the Lumia smartphone is Nokia’s biggest ever in the UK, taking in not just TV but cinema, digital, outdoor and a big push in retail.

He adds that in addition to Nokia’s youth focus, which has resulted in a tie-up with boy band One Direction, the brand will be taking a more youthful tone overall to reach its wider audience.

“It’s important to separate that youth campaign out from what we’re doing as a brand. A specific all-in target at youth is not where we are,” Nichols clarifies.

“We mean lots of different positive things to lots of age groups and people. We will be youthful in our approach, but being youthful is different to targeting youth. We are being much broader than that. We are a revitalised brand,” he claims.

Johnson says the creative agency brief was to “make people say ’I can’t believe that’s Nokia’.” He adds: “Everything we are doing is digital or dynamic. You won’t see us using static media because we want people to see the phone’s features, like the tiles on the interface opening to reveal the social hub.”

Nichols says Nokia’s delivery has three phases - intrigue, excite and stampede. He explains that the intrigue period moved into ’excite’ with the release of the new brand advertising last month and following the new devices hitting the shelves this week, activity is now encouraging the stampede.

Johnson says the brand has been going for more diverse and intense media and promotional partners, and points to the fact that Nokia is the lead sponsor this year of the Turner Prize.

He says this tie-up is a result of the event being held in Sheffield for the first time and is part of Nokia’s strategic regional targeting.

“There’s a lot of latent love for Nokia outside London and we want to reignite that,” says Johnson. “Working with the arts enables us to tell a legitimate design story in that space - and get influential people to come along and see Nokia in an environment it wouldn’t ordinarily be in."