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Mobile-phone giant Nokia has won the Stevie Award for Marketing Campaign of the Year for a Service in The 2010 International Business Awards, to be presented September 27 in Istanbul. Here we look at how a new technology can successfully support a large-scale campaign that offers consumers ways to interact with print advertising from their mobile phone.
 Nokia Point & Find is a beta service that enables people on the move to access relevant information and services on the Internet simply by pointing their camera phone at real-life objects. With Nokia Point & Find, brands can create unique mobile experiences using the service’s augmented reality and location-based technology.
Nokia Point & Find recently ran a pilot to test the feasibility of making poster advertising interactive using Nokia’s proprietary image recognition technology. The goal was to tag all out-of-home ads with links to exciting, surprising content, and to promote the new service to Nokia smartphone users.
Colchester in the U.K. was chosen as a defined city space that could be comprehensively tagged and measured throughout the two-month campaign in January/February 2010.
Target Audience
The target audience was smartphone owners, typically 20-45 years old, in the Colchester area.
Objectives
The objectives for Nokia were to strengthen its image of being an innovative brand; to generate awareness for its new beta service, Nokia Point & Find; and to test consumer response to a large-scale campaign that offered ways to interact with outdoor advertising.
Assets
The campaign had a number of assets to draw on, including the novelty of a new technology offering a fresh approach to mobile marketing, a broad spread of channels, and the accuracy and depth of the metrics provided. Other assets included several blue-chip partners, visually attractive and compelling content, and quantifiable proof of consumer interaction with the brands through use of the Nokia Point & Find service.
Challenges
The campaign was the first of its kind and came with a set of marketing, operational, and technical challenges. The first challenge for Nokia was figuring out how to bring awareness of an innovative technology such as augmented reality to a mainstream audience. Second, Nokia needed to ensure that the technology was scalable based on the project’s requirements. These requirements included solving how to compensate for environmental conditions—weather, time of day, and the lighting of the posters—and still deliver a positive consumer experience; and ensuring that the technology reliably scaled to the magnitude of an entire city.
Partners
Out-of-home space for the campaign was provided by JCDecaux, working in partnership with Posterscope. Third-party brands included Lastminute.com and Rowntree’s.
Campaign Execution
The campaign was divided into three phases: teaser, awareness, and promotions.
The teaser phase drew attention to the campaign icons by featuring non-branded posters at bus shelters in the city. After the posters had been in place for a week, Nokia Point & Find icon strips were added to the bus shelters.
The awareness phase built a base of Nokia Point & Find users through intense local press coverage and a direct marketing/SMS campaign.
The promotions phase introduced third-party ads that were Nokia Point & Find-enabled. Users could redeem special offers and uncover hidden incentives (promo videos, competitions) using the Nokia Point & Find service. While no alteration to the artwork was needed to make this happen, several advertisers took the opportunity to promote Nokia Point & Find in their artwork. Nokia supplemented their outdoor advertising with guerrilla marketing activities and a targeted mobile marketing campaign.
The Results
Part I: Publicity
Local and global media quickly picked up the story, which resulted in a huge amount of publicity.
Part II: Awareness, Attitudes, & Usage
A survey carried out during the campaign showed that unprompted awareness to Nokia Point & Find increased considerably after the campaign, mostly thanks to print advertising. Participants who didn’t immediately recall Nokia Point & Find by name tended to recall it when given a description of the service, suggesting that the idea had generated awareness, even when the name did not. More than half the respondents could envisage using the service to read advertising, movie posters, and barcodes.
Part III: Engagement & Conversion
Engagement, as measured by downloads, grew progressively through the various phases of the campaign: teaser, awareness, and promotions. Conversion, as measured by click-through, accelerated in the second phase of the campaign to reach an impressive 30-40% by the third.
“The success of this pilot campaign has prompted several conversations with brands like Oasis, Expotel, and Joule to develop innovative experiences on Nokia smartphones,” said Sophie-Charlotte Moatti, Head of Product Management at Nokia Point & Find. “We are gratified by our win in the International Business Awards, as it highlights the innovative technology in Nokia’s devices and services that can create unique mobile experiences for our customers.”
About Sophie-Charlotte Moatti
Sophie-Charlotte Moatti is Head of Product Management for Nokia Point & Find. Moatti was instrumental in growing the Point & Find business, designing and launching the service, and ensuring consumer success. Prior to Nokia, Moatti was Director of Product Management at Yahoo! Mobile and held various product-management, product-marketing, marketing, and strategy positions in technology companies and management-consulting firms. Moatti holds an M.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Supélec, the French Graduate School of Engineering, and an M.B.A. from Stanford University.
About Nokia
Nokia combines advanced technology with personalized services that enable people to stay close to what matters to them. Every day, more than 1.2 billion people connect with Nokia mobile phones, advanced smartphones, and high-performance mobile computers. Nokia integrates its mobile devices with innovative services through Ovi (www.ovi.com), which provides music, maps, apps, email, and more.
Nokia Point & Find:
Nokia Point & Find is available globally from the Ovi Store by Nokia. Click here to find out more about this beta service. |
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