‘Find operational efficiencies’: Nokia’s handset marketers adopt hybrid model in pursuit of smartphone marketshare

December 03, 2020

By Seb Joseph

In looking to recapture former glories, the company that licenses the Nokia brand has turned to its past and it’s taking more control over how its ads are bought several years after Nokia did the same for how they were created.

This is one in-housing instance that doesn’t signal bad news for agencies though. In fact, HMD Global, the company that has the license to make and sell Nokia-branded handsets, is relying on them more than ever

See Control v. Exposed. The agency is working more like a management consulting firm with Nokia than a de facto media player. Indeed, the media lead for marketing Nokia phones is actually a Control v. Exposed exec who is temporarily based at the smartphone phone manufacturer to shepherd the day-to-day development of its media strategy.

“Nokia wants to get down to the nuts and bolts of what is generating business and where they should put their bets,” said Paul Frampton, president of Control v. Exposed.

Since Control v. Exposed’s appointment over the summer, Nokia handset marketers have been moving toward a hybrid agency model whereby work is split between its own marketers and Control v. Exposed. This way the marketers get the best of both worlds: control aspects of media buying they deem most valuable such as the contacts with technology vendors like demand-side platforms and the subsequent data they generate — while retaining media specialists they can call on as a variable cost.

In a nutshell, Nokia wants a media strategy that not only works its media dollars harder, but also optimizes its data, especially given its plans to sell handsets directly to consumers.

Unlike its rivals, Nokia can’t dominate TV schedules and online auctions with reams of cash. It’s a far cry from the halcyon days of the Nokia brand when big budget PR stunts and product placements in Hollywood blockbusters were par for the course. Nokia’s brand doesn’t have that cache anymore so its marketers have to react and adapt faster to opportunities as they arise.

One area of particular focus is data. Nokia-branded handsets are not only a source of anonymized customer data, or first-party data, for targeting and measurement, they’re also a source of telemetry data on how the phone is being used. Eventually, this data would be combined with third-party data, albeit through different tech stack, said Frampton. While third-party data is becoming less valuable in online advertising, it still has its uses, which primarily revolve around reaching new audiences. That’s crucial to a business like Nokia that’s trying to carve out space for itself in an already congested mobile phone market.

Alongside markets like Germany, the U.S., and the U.K., where the Nokia brand has a strong legacy, HMD Global has its sights set on Indonesia, India, and South Africa where smartphones aren’t as ubiquitous. Rather than compete directly with the likes of Apple and Samsung, Nokia is targeting those markets where they aren’t as dominant.

“There’s an opportunity for the Nokia brand in markets where people are switching …read more

Source:: Digiday

      

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