Nokia takes huge strides to convince us that our S60-powered smartphones can be used to manage our lives in every aspect. Various marketing campaigns such as the Henry Needles one ask what’s in your pocket, is it many things, or one thing. Nokia’s various other activities encourage us to use our phones as digital cameras, MP3 players, and productivity machines. Built-in email, calendars, a killer web browser, and GPS offer everything you can think of, and more.
So then, when I saw the following commercial on TV the other day, I was astonished, convinced it was a Nokia commercial, for an S60-powered phone, and even showing in the United States. However, I knew it was too good to be true, and you can imagine my disappointment as, towards the end, the various pieces come together to form a BlackBerry.
Now, my first reaction is, why didn’t Nokia come up with this ad? Of course, it’s too late for that, though, so let’s form that into another, more useful question: Why isn’t Nokia coming up with clear, descriptive ads like this that will appeal to *real* people?
The latest Nokia marketing campaign is for the E71 and E66, dubbed ‘The Unloader‘. If you’ve not seen it, you can check it out, though you’re not missing much. It’s an online campaign that encourages you to upload a document that you hate (and presumably got via email) and have it destroyed by a complicated machine in a room somewhere, on video. Aside from a link to the product pages, it’s not immediately clear how this ties into the E71 or E66, and it most certainly doesn’t demonstrate why I should be interested in these devices. There’s mention of the updated email client, but there’s no demo of it, nor anything else shown in The Unloader that gives me an idea as to the benefits of these particular devices.
This isn’t the first time, either. You may recall the Nokia Open To Anything campaign, which showed the N95 8GB, along with a handful of instances where ‘users’ had come up with their own uses. The sad thing about this campaign, is that while it was close, none of the usage scenarios were realistic, and thus it didn’t really show how the N95 8GB would solve a problem you might have. (Also pointed out here.)
On the contrary, other campaigns immediately showed just how a specific device or feature was useful. The Stavros one (a personal favorite) clearly demonstrated how Nokia SportsTracker and the N82’s built-in GPS reciever could track your trips on a map, and encouraged users to do the same – real usage of real features. The ‘Open At Your Own Risk’ campaign required you to use the Download! app on your phone to download and install a ringtone, and application, and a wallpaper. Again, real usage of real features. Another great example is the Face the Task campaign, for the N96. Again, encouraging and showing off real usage of real features.
What do you think? Were you fooled by the BlackBerry ad, and left wishing Nokia had come up with it? Do you think the various marketing campaigns really educate people about why they’d want the latest S60-powered smartphone, or are they simply ‘neat’?
