Nokia to revamp marketing strategy?

Last week I made a focused complaint/suggestion about Nokia’s advertising efforts for Nokia Drive.

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/07/16/hey-nokia-please-advertise-your-nokia-mapping-solutions-more/

At the end, I mention that poor marketing is pervasive throughout pretty much every part of Nokia.  They just don’t understand marketing. I haven’t got a degree in marketing or any experience working in the marketing department, so don’t pay attention to me. Pay attention to your eyes and ears to see pretty much all of their ads suck and that their campaigns are mostly duds. I’m not the only Nokia fan thinking this. You’ll only need to read up to the tweets and blog comments to feel the collective breeze of Nokia fans shaking their heads in disappointment.

Let me copy and paste from the last rant. It might be a little harsh. I don’t think it’s harsh enough.

If there’s one thing Nokia is supreme at is that it sucks at advertising anything that it is good at.

You’ll never really know half the amazing stuff a Nokia is capable of unless you’re in a Nokia blogosphere related bubble.

Outside of it, Nokia’s assets fizzle away because why? Nokia won’t advertise it. If they do, they will advertise it in the WORST WAY POSSIBLE or advertise it really well, but you’ll never see that advert ever again.

Why? I don’t know. It seems ingrained into their way of working that all good things must remain secret.

http://mynokiablog.com/2012/07/16/hey-nokia-please-advertise-your-nokia-mapping-solutions-more/

I can’t blame the individual marketeers at Nokia. They’re working on the Nokia guidelines on how to do things, and the size and geographic span inevitably means breaks in consistency. The bigger goal must be to change whatever culture is still at Nokia that prevents them from effectively showcasing their products through coherent, consistent and productive marketing and advertising efforts.

We’ve been expecting some changes to happen at Nokia after their head of Marketing, Jerri DeVard stepped down (June 14th). Today, Reuters reports on some findings by Financial Times:

Nokia is considering ripping up its traditional mass marketing strategy…

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/23/net-us-nokia-idUSBRE86I0F620120723?f

The specifics of what will be changed are unknown. All this tells us is that instead of trying to get their phones out in all channels, Nokia would favour going into partnerships to create dedicated support for its smartphones. A little bit like Nokia’s work with AT&T and T-Mobile. Is it enough that Nokia targeted the 2nd and 4th largest carrier in the US? Would Nokia have done better getting Verizon and Sprint on board too? Was partnership with AT&T only possible if they worked exclusively?

Reuters says initially, one or two networks in the whole of Europe may partner with Nokia. Not sure how that’s going to work. Europe is not a country like US, you can’t just go with two networks for a whole continent.

Apparently, carriers may also be offered a financial stake in the success of the range. While that’s all fine and good that Nokia tries to tempt the carriers into giving a little favour for Lumia, that’s just not enough. Money incentives isn’t enough to impart even a hint of success for Nokia.  Hundreds of millions or billions must have been spent collectively on Nokia’s own efforts at marketing in the past few years and what is there to show for it? We can’t just wait for Orange, or Vodafone or T-Mobile to come up with something whilst Nokia flounders around with their old marketing style.

This is part of an email I sent to Stephen Elop in June 8th. I’ve mentioned it plenty of times here before but I just want to reiterate it again.

One consistent theme I have seen through the years is marketing that fails to deliver the correct message. Nokia has had some great products in the past but has been unable to communicate with the public what precisely makes them great. They’ve been missing the need to focus on using advertisement time to let potential consumers connect with a feature. This involves the consumer truly understanding what your products offer. These features might not even be things they’re looking for. The advertising should be the tool for enhancing awareness and improving perception of Nokia’s products. Show the feature, demonstrate why it can be useful, show it in a familiar family setting where consumers may be able to empathise with the feature and see themselves using it and finding it useful too. I know this sounds completely simple and obvious, but I’ve been observing Nokia for a long time and it seems this message is still not coming through. It’s getting much better now though. This is an example of a post I wrote a couple of years ago. It’s a bit tongue in cheek.

http://mynokiablog.com/2010/06/08/what-nokia-needs-to-learn-from-apple-keynotes-pointers-from-steve-jobs-iphone-4-announcement/

….

There’s a bit of this post that also might be useful.

Link

Source: Financial Times

Via: Reuters via PhoneArena

Thanks Mac for the tip.

Category: Nokia