Individual Assignment On Developing Effective Communications Brand: NOKIA Lumia

Submitted By Krishna Bhatt Roll No 53 PGDM Comm

PGDM - Comm | Krishna Bhatt | Roll No - 53

Marketing Communications Marketing communications are the means by which firms attempt to inform, persuade, and remind consumers directly or indirectly about the products and brands that they sell. Marketers may not share their consumers field of experience but must understand the consumers field of experience. Integrated marketing communication is the integration by the company of its communication channels to deliver a clear, consistent, and compelling message about the organization and its brands. It calls for recognizing all contact points (brand contact) where the customer may encounter the company and its brands. It also involves identifying the target audience and shaping a wellcoordinated promotional program to obtain the desired audience response. Marketers are moving towards viewing communications as managing the customer relationship over time. Developing Effective Communications There are 8 steps involved in developing effective communications with the first being very basic step of identifying the target audience. Let us try and understand each step involved in this process considering the example of what Nokia did for creating awareness about their Lumia phones. NOKIA The Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational communications and information technology corporation (originally a paper production plant) that is headquartered in Espoo, Finland. Its principal products are mobile telephones and portable IT devices. As of 2012, Nokia employs 101,982 people across 120 countries, conducts sales in more than 150 countries, and reports annual revenues of around 30 billion. By 2012, it was the world's secondlargest mobile phone maker in terms of unit sales (after Samsung), with a global market share of 18.0% in the fourth quarter of that year. It is the world's 274th-largest company measured by 2013 revenues according to the Fortune Global 500. WHY NOKIA? Nokia was the world's largest vendor of mobile phones from 1998 to 2012. However, over the past five years its market share declined as a result of the growing use of touch screen smart phones from other vendorsprincipally the iPhone, by Apple, and devices running on Android, an operating system created by Googlein which Nokia did not take enough advantage of. As a result, the corporation's share price fell from a high of US$40 in late 2007 to under US$2 in mid2012. This was a crisis period for Nokia and it is during the crisis time, the external communication of a company comes to rescue. To recover, Nokia implemented several strategies which will be studied further in this article.

Step 1: Identifying the target audience In this step, the company analyzes the potential buyers of its products, current users, deciders, influencers etc. It is often useful to define target audience in terms of usage and loyalty. Image analysis can be conducted to profile the target audience in terms of brand knowledge. For its

PGDM - Comm | Krishna Bhatt | Roll No - 53

Lumia series, NOKIA identified youth as its target market and it launched its products with several variants coming in Vibrant colours to attract youth. Step 2: Determine the communications objective Marketers seek a purchase response that results from a consumer decision-making process that includes the stages of buyer readiness in terms of Awareness, Knowledge, Liking, Preference, Conviction or Purchase. In case of NOKIA Lumia, there was category need and brand awareness, so they needed to focus more on brand attitude and brand purchase intention of communication objective. Step 3: Design the communications Designing includes the message content and structure, message contentwhat to say and message structure and contenthow to say it. Message content is an appeal or theme that will produce the desired response. There are three types of appeal used namely Rational appeal, Emotional appeal, and Moral appeal. For NOKIA Lumia, Nokia used emotional appeal in their advertisements by showing young and happy people in the ad. Promotional strategies for Nokia Lumia Nokia has invested three times the marketing investment of any other single product launch in Nokias history in Lumia devices. To differentiate Lumia devices from other Windows phones available in the market, Nokia has identified navigation, music and sports services. Nokia has unveiled a youthful and revitalised marketing strategy, using the internal strap line live adventure everywhere for the launch of its debut Windows Phone devices as it looks to reclaim its position at the top of the smart phone market. Lumia devices will also comes preloaded with a music streaming service MixRadio that gives users access to remixes of full-length tracks without charge. The new devices will also come with a unique ESPN Sports Hub app with no subscription required which can stream the latest news updates to a users device and also a preloaded mapping service Nokia Drive. Youth Oriented Nokias VP of Marketing creation, Steven Overman, has identified the 25-year-old demographics as a key segment in the marketing of the devices, which will have heavy emphasis on social media. Nokia is changing its strategy to focus on youth consumers as it sets about rejuvenating the brand and its tone of voice in a bid to stay competitive in the smart phone market. The Finnish manufacturer is to ramp up its use of social media, partner with more youth-focused celebrities and brands - especially those with a music focus - and continue to ensure its phones are affordable as it looks to capture the youth market.

Lumia series of Nokia is available in a variety of vibrant colours like red, yellow, cyan etc which are eye-catchy and are bound to attract youth towards them. Also they have their primary focus on social media applications which have become an inseparable part of youth over a period of time. PGDM - Comm | Krishna Bhatt | Roll No - 53 3

TV Ads for Nokia Lumia According to John Nichols, Nokias UK marketing director, consumers will be able to instantly recognise that Nokias tone of voice has dramatically changed in its marketing campaigns. People will go wow, I cant believe thats Nokia, the new campaign will make people surprised and delighted that Nokia is doing something this cool, he says. As an example of the new youthful approach, there were a series of mini blip television ads that aired a week before the launch of Nokia Lumia range as a teaser to the unveiling of Lumia range on 26th October and another 60 seconds ad was launched on the day of unveiling. Untraditional marketing campaign for Nokia Lumia As per Nokias head of brand campaigns, Adam Johnson, the UK marketing campaign did not include any static media like traditional press ads because according to Johnson, they were not dynamic enough to do the phone justice. Communications around the Nokia Lumia range also focussed on the practical uses of phone rather than technical specifications. Nokia also used real people as its brand ambassadors rather than some known celebrities. Nokia believes that, People - not consumers - is where uniquely we stand as a brand. The competition isnt doing that, only Nokia can globally own that brand essence. Other marketing strategies employed by Nokia Nokia became a sponsor of the Turner Prize, which recently relocated its ceremony to Newcastle, as it looks to embrace all of the UK in its reach, rather than just focusing on London. The company is also partnered with Northern and Shell, which owns The Express, The Daily Star, Channel 5 and OK! magazine, to place cover wraps and other innovative ad formats, which could include placing editorial in tiles, to reflect the phones interface. Nokia has chosen to position its retail stores as the lead communications channel in its branding strategy looking forward to make the shopping experience more theatrical. They have developed new store layouts to encourage visitors to interact with Nokias new phone line up and focus less on transactions. Their key focus is the consumer experience. Social media Nokia has launched a Twitter app that allows it to segment its audience on the platform by the devices they own, which it claims is a first for the mobile technology industry. According to Nokia, the Tweetsender app solves the problem sending out device or locationspecific messages on Twitter to its large pool of followers. Also the followers of @Nokia on Twitter will be able sign up to receive personalised messages based on their device and location about upgrade information and similar things. Special Campaigns Nokia is hoping the marketing push behind the launch of its 41-megapixel camera smart phone will help the Lumia 1020 device become a famous halo product for the rest of its range and boost the appeal of the Windows Phone operating system.

PGDM - Comm | Krishna Bhatt | Roll No - 53

Nokia has tried reviving its image by trying to connect to a young target audience and by launching products that are more youth driven and appealing to the young generation. In spite of making so many efforts, Nokia has not been able to regain its market share because of the strong competitors available in the market like Apples iPhone and Samsungs Android Smart phones. Step 4: Select the Communications channel Personal communications channel like e.g. face-to-face, over the telephone, through e-mail or Non personal communications (mass communications) channel like e.g. radio, television, magazine, and billboard can be used. Personal communication is effective because it allows personal addressing and feedback. Non-personal communication is media that carry messages without personal contact or feedback including major media, atmospheres, and eventsthat affect the buyer directly. Step 5: Establish budget Affordable budget method sets the budget at an affordable level and ignores the effects of promotion on sales. Percentage-of-sales method sets the budget at a certain percentage of current or forecasted sales or unit sales price. Competitive-parity method sets the budget to match competitor outlays and represents industry standards. Objective-and-task method sets the budget based on what the firm wants to accomplish with promotion and includes defining promotion objectives, determining tasks to achieve the objectives and estimating costs. It forces management to spell out its assumption about the relationship between outlays and results but is difficult to use. NOKIA seems to have used this method for establishing the budget for their Lumia series. Step 6: Decide on Media mix Companies must allocate the marketing communications budget over the eight major modes of communication advertising, sales promotion, public relations and publicity, events and experiences, direct marketing, interactive marketing, word-of-mouth marketing and the sales force. As discussed in step 4, NOKIA used a combination of the above mentioned media mix. Step 7: Manage Results After implementing the communications plan, the communications director must measure its impact. Members of the target audience are asked whether they recognize or recall the message, how many times they saw it, what points they recall, how they felt about the message and what are their previous and current attitudes towards the product and the company. Step 8: Managing Integrated Marketing Communications Managing the Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Process that evaluates the strategic roles of a variety of communication to provide clarity, consistency, and maximum sales impact through the seamless integration of discrete messages is the last step of the process. IMC also improves the companys ability to reach the right customers with the right messages at the right time and in the right place.

PGDM - Comm | Krishna Bhatt | Roll No - 53

REFERENCES http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcom.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia http://econsultancy.com/in/blog/62030-how-to-build-a-social-brand-the-nokia-case-study http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Research+and+Markets%3A+'Nokia+Case+Study%3A+Struggling+in+ the+Smartphone...-a0295980077 http://domapp01.shu.edu/depts/uc/apps/libraryrepository.nsf/resourceid/49BD6B888E4AE598852 56E2300524537/$File/Derites-Cheryl-M_Master.pdf?Open http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/brands/nokia/ http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/01/24/how-asha-got-smart/

PGDM - Comm | Krishna Bhatt | Roll No - 53