The Nokia Brand

• Nokia had been a dominant player in the

mobile market ever since it entered the
market.

• It quickly established itself as a strong brand

by focusing on branding.
 The company’s philosophy the
`Nokia Way’ called for four
brand values :

• Creative
• Inspiring
• Human
• Accessible
• In the initial years, Nokia focused on the end
user and how they used the products.

• It was also the first

company to recognize
and treat mobile phones
as a fashion accessory.
• It kept track of the colors that were in fashion and
increased visibility of the brand by displaying it :

- At fashion shows

- In the hands of style icons and film stars

- Through product placements in the films, etc.

• The company had also done well to understate its

Finnish lineage, as Finland was reportedly not
equated with cool mobile phones
• It positioned the brand by focusing on technology as well as
the human side.

• It was able to gain the trust of the people with its pay-off line:

“We call this human technology”

and
“Connecting People”
• It was also one of the first mobile phone companies to adopt
lifestyle positioning.

• Peter Lempert (Account Director “The Richards Group”) said:

“We want the phone to be perceived as a trusted personal

device that gives you a sense of individualism…….. It’s not
something you buy that looks like someone else’s.”
• Nokia was such a big brand that it did not need to name its
various mobile phone models. It used numeric descriptions
for its products which did not even appear on the mobile
phones.

• In 1998, the company established itself as a leading player in

the highly competitive mobile phone market by dislodging
Motorola, which was also considered as one of the world’s
top brands.
Nokia Brand – Loosing it’s Sheen?
• Though Nokia continued to be the mobile phone of choice
among consumers, in 2002 the total sales of its mobile
phones started to show signs of a fall.

• In the following year it faced stiff competition from Samsung

and some other operator-branded mobile phones
• In 2004, Nokia’s market share declined to 30
percent from around 40 percent in 2003.

• The company had failed to foresee how popular

clamshell mobile phones would become.
• While it’ rivals were offering these models,
Nokia continued to churn out the single piece
design popularly called `Candy Bar’.
• The company was also affected by the success
of Motorola’s `RAZR’ series
• The year saw a major erosion in Nokia’s brand
as youth started to opt for the trendier mobile
phones of its rivals such as Samsung.

• Some analysts felt that the brand was losing its

sheen and it was among the world’s top ten
brands because of its size rather that its ability
to form a meaningful relationship with its
customers.

• According to Interbrand, Nokia’s ranking

slipped to No.8 among the world’s top ten
brands as its brand value felt by 18 percent in
just 12 months.
• Though Nokia agreed that it had lost favor with some
of the young consumers, it contended that brand
equity took years to build or lose.

• Tapio Hedman (Head of Global Branding, Nokia) said:

“Once you have it, it’s a bit like insurance. It’s not
likely to be eroded very fast unless you make one
mistake after another.”

• Nokia concentrated on economical phones in

developing areas & it’s rivals such as Samsung and LG
gained market share by focusing on stylish products.
• Industry experts felt that the company had also failed to
gauge the demand for slim phones while continuing to focus
on providing low-priced phones.

• Consumers opted for product names such as RAZR, Nokia

product’s naming structure failed to offer any human
connection to its products.
• Rivals like Motorola was using
brand names such as RAZR, PEBL,
SLVR and ROKR.

• LG was too using sub-brands such

as Black Level Series for their high
end phones..

Because it was easier to remember names than

numbers, they conducted.
Moving Beyond Umbrella Branding
• In 2005, Nokia launched N-series & E-
series sub brands, with high end phones
that were rich in features.

• In 2006, the company formally

announced that its new products would
come with names rather than numbers as
it had realized that consumers related to
names that had a meaning.
• On April 2005, Nokia launched its multimedia
mobile phones called the Nseries, with an
idea to promote the Nseries as a sub-brand of
the main Nokia brand for the new converged
market for multimedia phones.

• The most significant feature of the Nseries

range was that each of the phones specialized
in a particular type of multimedia
functionality.
• N73 & N93 with an embedded 3.2 megapixel camera, excelled
in imaging capabilities..

• N81 & N91 excelled in music and gaming functions and had
higher data storage capabilities..
• Nseries was the first major sub-brand to be unveiled by Nokia
since the launch of N-Gage.

• Its products would be competing with products such as iPods

and big camera brands such as Canon
• The company also entered into
strategic alliance with with Carl
Zeiss, to increase the imaging
capabilities of the phones.

• Another important reason to introduce Nseries was to

increase the brand’s appeal to the younger consumers, a
market segment it had steadily been losing to competitors.
Co-Branding With Yahoo!
• Nokia announced a tie-up with
Yahoo! To use its Internet Services
on its phones in 2005.

• The first Nokia phones on which the

Yahoo!’s applications were pre-
installed were:
- Nokia6680
-Nokia6681
-Nokia6630

• Later, all the Nseries range of phones

released by Nokia were pre-installed
with Yahoo!’s applications.
• Nokia announced the launch of its business-oriented mobile phones under
a new sub-brand the `Eseries’ on October 2005.

• The new range of Eseries mobile phones were targeted at the market
segment of business executives who were constantly on the move and
needed to be in touch with the office.
• Nokia had a range of business-
oriented phones with the
`Communicator’ tag such as
Nokia9500 Communicator &
Nokia9300 Communicator, way back
in 1996.

• But they were overtaken by competitor brands such as BlackBerry, which

entered the market later.

• Eseries was introduced to cater to this

segment of business users.
• The new range of Eseries phones bridged the
converging worlds of mobile telephony,
corporate telephony and the Information
Technology (IT).

• The Eseries range offered all types of business

specific functions like `push’ email, WLAN etc.
• The device also facilitated access to other third
party applications like BlackBerry Connect.

• The strategy behind the Eseries range of business-

oriented phones was to compete directly with
market leaders in this space such as RIM & PALM.