Nokia PDF

INS945
t
os
The Nokia N8 ‘Push
rP
Snowboarding’ Campaign:
An Avant-Garde Social Media Strategy

from Engagement to Sales
yo
op
tC
No
04/2015-6117
This case was developed by David Dubois, Assistant Professor of Marketing at INSEAD, with the help of Mastak Pal
Kaur, INSEAD MBA 2014. We wish to thank Stuart Wells for his support in the case preparation. It is intended to be
used as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of an administrative
situation. Data in the case has been disguised for purposes of confidentiality.
Do
Additional material about INSEAD case studies (e.g., videos, spreadsheets, links) can be accessed at
cases.insead.edu.
Copyright © 2015 INSEAD
COPIES MAY NOT BE MADE WITHOUT PERMISSION. NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE COPIED, STORED, TRANSMITTED, REPRODUCED OR DISTRIBUTED IN
ANY FORM OR MEDIUM WHATSOEVER WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNER.
This document is authorized for educator review use only by Ajit Singh, HE OTHER until February 2018. Copying or posting is an infringement of copyright. Permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu or
617.783.7860
t
In January 2010, Nokia’s marketing team was asked to think about a roll-out strategy for the
os
launch of a new product – the Nokia N8 (Exhibit 1). Stuart Wells, Integrated Global
Campaign Lead at Nokia, was put in charge of developing and executing the launch strategy
to meet the sales targets. A creative agency, Hyper, was hired to come up with ideas as well as
developing and refining those presented by Wells. With a tight deadline (one week),
ambitious sales targets, and a highly competitive market, this was no small challenge.
rP
Nokia’s History
Nokia was founded in 1865. The small paper production plant in south-west Finland
reinvented itself in the mid-1960s to concentrate on telecommunications. From 1992, under a
new CEO, Jorma Ollila, it kept pace with the rapidly growing demand for mobile phones,
becoming the global market leader by 1998.
yo
Its bestselling phones were the Nokia 3310 and Nokia 1100, which sold 126 million and 200
million units respectively by 2006 (Exhibit 2). Its dominant position allowed it to develop
ambitious projects such as the first ever mobile film-making project, which was directed by
Spike Lee. The goal was to collaborate on user-generated creative content through mobile
filming (Exhibit 3). Created as an open source platform, it enabled people to upload original
creations (videos, audios, photos or ideas) to the Nokia Productions website and access
content uploaded by others (Exhibit 4).
op
Problems began to surface in the new millennium, casting doubt on whether Nokia’s
leadership could be sustained in the mobile market. Firstly, Nokia’s Symbian operating
system (like other dominant systems such as the BlackBerry OS), although powerful,
struggled to support the proliferation of third-party applications. Secondly, there was
aggressive competition from new smartphones and mobile operating systems, particularly
tC
Apple’s iPhone (using iOS) and Samsung’s Galaxy series (using Google’s Android).
Competition in the Smartphone Market

Nokia had been a key developer of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications), the
second-generation mobile technology that could carry data as well as voice traffic. But it lost
No
much of its first-mover advantage during the development of third-generation (3G) phones
which could be used to browse the web, download music, watch TV on the move, and more.
At the launch of the iPhone in 2007, CEO Steve Jobs had announced: “Apple is going to
reinvent the phone.” Supported by the iOS, the original release of the operating system
included touchscreen interaction, visual voicemail, HTML email, Safari web browser,
threaded text messaging and YouTube. The market response to the touchscreen device was
overwhelmingly positive, despite initial reservations about speed and the phone’s inability to
connect using 3G devices. Time magazine named it the ‘Invention of the Year’ in 2007.
Do
Meanwhile, Android – a Linux-based operating system – was making waves with HTC
Dream, the first Android-powered phone, which was commercialised in 2008.1 As an open
1 Source: http://gizmodo.com/5053264/t-mobile-g1-full-details-of-the-htc-dream-android-phone
Copyright © INSEAD 1
617.783.7860
t
source platform it gave developers the freedom to work more collaboratively and develop new
os
applications, allowing handset manufacturers and wireless operators to offer new and
innovative products much faster and at lower cost, and gave users a more customised
experience.2 Google bought the Android platform in 2005 and launched its own Nexus series
of devices in 2010. As a major innovation in the mobile phone market, Android’s open source
credentials made it a major competitor to the iOS.
rP
Selling 6.1 million first-generation iPhone units in the last part of 2008, Apple became the
third largest mobile phone manufacturer by revenues after Nokia and Samsung,3 and briefly
surpassed Research In Motion's (RIM) BlackBerry sales of 5.2 million units.4 In 2010, Apple
sold 14.1 million iPhones, representing 91% unit growth. In the US market alone, the iOS was
the second largest phone operating system, with a 26.2% market share, after Android-powered
smartphones that represented 43.6% of the market with 9.1 million units.5
yo
Nokia was clearly losing ground to its competitors. While it remained the leader in first
generation mobile phones, it had no response to smartphones, partly because of the
inadequacy of its operating system.
The Nokia N8
The Nokia N8, a touchscreen smartphone that ran on the Symbian 3 mobile operating system
op
– a new-generation platform allowing touchscreen and connection to apps – was released on
23 September 2010 at the Nokia Online Store, a week before its worldwide launch. It featured
a 12-megapixel camera and a pentaband 3.5G radio. Among the connectivity features were
HDMI output and USB On-The-Go. Seen as the first true competitor to the iPhone, part of its
appeal lay in its superior power and technological capabilities, which were significantly
stronger than that of its rivals.
tC
The high cost of manufacturing and distribution meant that margins in the phone market were
small, putting pressure on the marketing function to achieve strong sales figures in addition to
awareness. While the N8 was a great innovation, its success would depend on whether
customers saw it as significantly better than its rivals. Nokia had worked with many creative
agencies, but it was Hyper that played a vital role in the launch campaign. Having conducted
several successful campaigns for Cadbury that had pushed up product awareness and sales,
No
the agency was asked to find ways to demonstrate N8’s strong points: its connectivity,
processing power and originality.
An Avant-Garde Social Media Strategy

Social media platforms had a number of things in common with the N8: fast growth, a
pioneering spirit, and a desire to connect people. Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms
Do
2 Source: http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html
3 Source: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/01/21Apple-Reports-First-Quarter-Results.html
4 Source: http://appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/21/apple_iphone_3g_
sales_surpass_rims_blackberry.html
5 Sources: http://www.iphoneincanada.ca/news/apple-q4-results-14m-iphones-sold-jobs-blasts-rim/;
http://www.wired.com/2010/11/iphone-android-marketshare
617.783.7860
t
brought people together, helping to strengthen existing relationships and form new ones.
os
Given the role of devices such as the N8 in connecting people, the Marketing team reasoned
that social media (which were relatively new in 2010) could help promote the phone to
digitally-savvy customers. Indeed a growing portion of internet and social networking sites’
users came from mobile.
However, a number of major brands had suffered from failing to use social media platforms
rP
effectively – any mishandling would instantly spiral through the networks – and as a result
many brands shied away from the hyper-connected world. In one instance, a pilot for
Southwest Airlines had asked an overweight passenger, Kevin Smith, to leave the plane
(insisting that regulations required passengers of his size to book two seats). Smith, a well-
known filmmaker, live-tweeted his experience to his 1.64 million Twitter followers, with
disastrous results for the airline’s image and reputation.
yo
Apple and Samsung engaged with social media with caution. When Apple launched the
iPhone 4, the marketing campaign comprised mainly PR, print advertisements and TV ads.
Apple never used free social media to market its hardware products and engage customers.
The only presence it had on social media was for sub-brands such as the App Store and
iTunes on Twitter.
At Nokia, Stuart Wells considered leveraging the new and relatively unexplored territory of
social media in a ground-breaking campaign for the N8. After discussions with Hyper, several
op
ideas emerged. The first was to invite customers to voice their ideas and base communications
on a “seeding” strategy whereby selected customers would be given the N8 with a mission to
showcase the aspects of the phone they found attractive to their friends using their preferred
social media platforms.
Ford had successfully run such a campaign for the launch of its Fiesta model in the US, where
tC
it had given a Fiesta for six months to 100 “seeds” who agreed to explore and extol the
strengths of the car and its hip, cool aspects. This produced a vast amount of user-generated
content in the form of videos, blogs and photos, including a YouTube video of a group of
young people staging a mini-concert in a Fiesta, and a young artist who painted a Fiesta in a
mural in California.
The second idea was to demonstrate the N8’s power by showing its ability to capture,
No
communicate and share information that consumers within their communities would value,
i.e., create social information that would contribute to the life of these communities. What that
information would be remained unclear. The fact that phones could be used in many different
situations opened up a vast range of possibilities.
Wells, a sports addict, had been inspired by a bike ride he had taken on the Tour de France
route, where he was able to compare his performance with that of the professional riders – and
was struck by the fact that there was no comparable ability to compare performance in the
snowboarding field.
Do
One source of inspiration was a recent Nike campaign that combined the strength of
technology (the iPod) and a measuring device (Nike+ shoe). The Nike+ iPod Sports Kit,
launched in September 2010, measured and recorded the distance and pace of a walk or run.
A tiny transmitter embedded in the running shoe communicated with the Nike+ Sportband, a
617.783.7860
t
receiver plugged into an iPod Nano, or directly with iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS (or higher) or a
os
Nike+ Sportwatch.
Hyper recommended creating a strong online community around the N8 that could serve as a
springboard for speeding up product adoption and development. Their idea was to leverage
Nokia’s endorsement of open source and create an open online platform easily accessible for
the development of powerful new applications. Android used a similar approach (and
rP
thousands of passionate developers used its open source system to create new applications
ranging from recipes to educational applications for kids). Wells knew that this strategy could
prove effective if Nokia provided the social and/or monetary incentive to create a powerful
participatory culture (in the same way that Wikipedia relied exclusively on users to create and
maintain a body of universal knowledge). It also resonated with Nokia’s DNA and its values
of openness and innovation.
yo
With this in mind, he floated the idea of sensors that could measure and track snowboarding
performance with the N8, enabling snowboarders to compare their performance with others.
Hyper refined his idea and together with the Marketing team designed a campaign dubbed
“Push Snowboarding”. It aimed to give the N8 a powerful launch, create momentum, increase
product referrals and adoption, and produce high levels of customer engagement in the form
of customer-generated content and the developers’ contribution to the phone’s applications.
op
The Launch Strategy
Nokia Global Marketing decided to go with the idea as it would allow the N8 to not only
influence the life of a specific community but also become an integral part of it. Initial data
indicated that professional sports involving a high level of physical activity might be a good
fit given the overlap with the N8’s features – its power, precision, and capabilities such as
tC
high-resolution pictures – as well as giving athletes and community members a chance to

connect. The N8 would be a tool to track and measure their personal performance and
compare it with that of fellow community members and professional snowboarders.
Research showed that snowboarding was one of the most watched sports at the Winter
Olympics in 2010. Despite airing at the same time as the finals of American Idol, the
snowboarding half-pipe finals had drawn a greater number of viewers than the more
No
mainstream singing contest. It also showed that the number of aspiring snowboarders was
much higher than the actual number of snowboarders. The combination of research, Well’s
passion for outdoor sports, and the attention-catching nature of snowboarding convinced them
that this was the ideal target for the N8 social media launch.
Wells and his team partnered with Burton for the campaign. Jake Burton Carpenter, an avid
outdoor enthusiast, had founded Burton Snowboards in 1977 and set up the world’s first
snowboarding factory. Burton had been the largest and most popular snowboarding brand in
the world since 1987 (Hagman, 2007). Known for its innovative and high-performing boards
Do
and clothing designs, it provided Nokia with the snowboarding expertise to help develop
sensors that could be attached to the snowboard and connected to the N8. The sensors would
allow snowboarders to measure metrics such as speed, rush, heart rate, pressure and
orientation. Crucially, this information could then be shared on social networks and used to
compare performance with peers and snowboarding champions. The “Nokia x Burton”
617.783.7860
t
partnership was seen as an effective way to target Nokia fans, Burton fans, and fans of
os
snowboarding and technology.
The Launch
The product and campaign were launched in September 2010 at the Nokia World event.
rP
Introducing the N8 at the event, Anssi Vanjoki, head of Nokia’s mobile business, described its
as “the start of something truly big”. Nokia was proactive in creating a buzz around the
product in the snowboarding community. The Push Snowboarding team launched a
competition to find a ‘rockstar developer’; the winner was a 24 year-old developer from
Brazil who developed an app that measured distance, airtime and speed when his phone was
thrown up in the air. Nokia used Twitter and YouTube to announce the results and invited him
to live and work in London as lead developer on the project – testimony to its commitment to
yo
involve people from across the world in the N8’s development.
The multichannel campaign involved a combination of rapidly growing social media

platforms and traditional TV advertising to amplify the momentum (Exhibit 5). For example,
Nokia sponsored the Burton US Open (Exhibit 6), where the campaign was aired on a large
scale and covered extensively on Twitter and YouTube (Exhibit 7). TV advertisements were
designed to generate curiosity and encourage viewers to visit the website, where the project
was explained in full and the resources made available for the community to get involved
op
themselves. The website was the main hub where content was published. The idea was to use
TV ads, Tweets and YouTube films to direct the target audience to the website and drive
engagement.
Content was generated from many sources such as snowboarding fans, the US Open,
interviews with professional snowboarders and testing videos. Results were shared on Twitter
tC
with fans, which further helped engage target customers. The experiences of top-ranked
snowboarders, such as three times TTR world snowboard champion Peetu Piiroinen and
snowboarding legend Terje Haakonsen, were shared online, allowing fans and developers
alike to dive into their performance data during their snowboarding runs.
A central aspect of the campaign was that it was based on openness. Nokia made available all
the data collected on parameters such as speed and airtime to the snowboarding community,
No
and encouraged them to use it as they liked and share the content on social media platforms.
One fan, who used the data to create a snowboard design, was presented with a bespoke
snowboard that Nokia made up from the design at the US Open, and arranged interview
coverage of the presentation.
As the software used for N8 was open source, developers could add features to the
snowboarding app through the Push Snowboarding website and coding. Such activities aimed
to make Nokia an integral part of the snowboarder community and involve them in product
development, and were actively published on social media platforms such as Twitter and
Do
YouTube as well as the website. As Wells put it, “The openness [of the platform] was all
about working with really smart people that didn’t necessarily have to come from Nokia, but
we helped it all come together.”
617.783.7860
t
Reactions to the Launch
os
Key stakeholders reacted positively to the campaign. Contagious, a magazine that published
an annual review of the ‘Most Contagious’ viral campaigns of the year, placed Push
Snowboarding high on the list, despite the project’s recent launch. Externally, the campaign
was extremely successful in engaging the snowboarding community. Internally, Wells had the
rP
complete support and financial backing of senior management – the company appreciated the
innovative nature of the campaign, which gave Nokia a strong brand image in the
snowboarding world.
In January 2011, Nokia was invited to the Burton European Snowboarding Open. Seeing the
opportunity to further engage the community and generate content, Nokia carried prototypes
of the N8 to the event and invited tech and snowboarding journalists and snowboarding
enthusiasts to use the product and provide feedback. At the event, Transworld Sport produced
yo
a six-minute report on Push Snowboarding, which reached 249 million people across the
world. The campaign was covered on major TV channels such as CNN, Sky Sports, Wired,
USA Today and ESPN.
Nokia also interviewed snowboarder Terje Haakonsen about his thoughts on the product and
made a video showing him using the N8. The idea was to engage snowboarders in the
development of the product, such as how to measure airtime (angle, rotation, speed in air,
op
impact on landing), why it was important to measure it (bragging rights, comparison with
friends and professionals) and why it needed to be accurate (importance of visual proof in the
snowboarding world).
At the end of the campaign a post-project assessment was carried out in four countries among
1,000 respondents to measure the impact: an improvement of 3.25% in brand preference and
an increase of 14% in device preference. The most substantial engagement came via Twitter,
tC
where as a result of the campaign Nokia reached 8.2 million people on the platform. On
YouTube, videos by Nokia and user-generated content resulted in 35,000 hours of viewing. In
addition to social media, online and press news reached another 36 million people.
The launch campaign was crowned with speaking engagements at major marketing events
across the world such as SXSW and Cannes Lions, and won a Eurobest Digital Grand Prix.
Analysis showed that incremental ROI was 1:13 on the investment made (for every dollar
No
spent on the campaign there was a return of $14). The campaign reached approximately 290
million people across the world through social media platforms and channels such as Sky
Sports, which contributed to the Nokia N8 recording the greatest number of pre-orders ever
from the company. Sales went up: more than 4 million units of the N8 were sold in the year
following the launch (see Exhibit 8).
Push Snowboarding was a bold step that used social media to develop the product, generate
awareness and engagement, and increase brand and device preference. No other company had
blended social and traditional media in this way. It was not just about marketing the N8, but
Do
also about ‘proof of concept’ and a glimpse of what the online future might hold.
617.783.7860
t
Questions to Consider
os
Looking at the campaign, what were the key success factors that made it go viral? (i.e., reach
290 million people):
1. How would you assess the campaign? On which metrics? Propose a multidimensional
rP
plan for measuring its success.
2. Did it do differently on distinct metrics? If you identify any gaps, why did you think they
emerged? What were the risks associated with the campaign?
3. What would you have done differently in the campaign? Would you have chosen another
strategy?
yo

op
tC
No
Do
617.783.7860
t
Exhibit 1
os
Nokia N8
rP
yo
op

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/mobile/phone/n8-00/specifications/

Exhibit 2
Nokia 331 and Nokia 1100, Best Selling Cell Phones in the 90s
tC
No

Nokia 3310 Nokia 1100
Source: http://tiny.cc/183kpx, http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_1100‐512.php
Do
617.783.7860
t
Exhibit 3
os
Spike Lee describing Nokia Productions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p12Ntwx-0M
rP
Exhibit 4
The Final Nokia Productions Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz1gFpG8mqA

Exhibit 5
yo
Push Snowboarding: Relative Importance of Channels within Channel Mix
op
tC
No

Exhibit 6
Launch of Push Snowboarding at The Burton US Open
Do
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rosY7rCu818
617.783.7860
t
Exhibit 7
os
Nokia’s Push Campaign on Twitter
rP
yo
op
tC
Exhibit 8
No
Unit Sales and Revenue Figures of the Main Smartphones on the Market
in the Year Following the Launch of the N8
Brand Product Unit price No. of units Revenue

sold
Apple Iphone 4 $499 - 599 14 million $7700 million
Nokia N8 $550 4 million $2200 million
Do
Samsung Galaxy S $499 - 979 10 million $6500 million
617.783.7860

Nokia PDF

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Nokia PDF

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

INS945

An Avant-Garde Social Media Strategy

Competition in the Smartphone Market

An Avant-Garde Social Media Strategy

high-resolution pictures – as well as giving athletes and community members a chance to

The multichannel campaign involved a combination of rapidly growing social media

Brand Product Unit price No. of units Revenue

Samsung Galaxy S $499 - 979 10 million $6500 million

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen