By Chris Lee

Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia’s digital marketing team wanted to do something different to support the launch of its N97 Mini mobile device. The company employed London-based ‘word of mouth’ communications agency 1000heads to engage with influential bloggers within the mobile tech online community.

The objectives of the campaign were to generate high volumes of positive word of mouth (WOM) feedback around the N97 Mini, to sustain that conversation and excitement about the device beyond launch and to extend global visibility and loyalty for Nokia and its products.

1000heads built its campaign upon an existing Swedish N97 campaign - the Nokia Human Research Department (NHRD) - featuring a Mexican mariachi band, Frank Grindrod, account director at 1000heads, told NMK.

Execution

Six Nokia N97 Minis in personalised boxes were delivered to the leading social media mobile opinion leaders in the UK and New York City, using geo-location and online monitoring tools to surprise each trialist at home, work and play with the device and a full accompanying Nokia-branded Mariachi band playing the famous Nokia ringtone.

The reactions, ranging from laughter to complete bewilderment, were filmed and uploaded to YouTube; and the voices themselves went on to discuss and review the devices with a real sense that Nokia had gone out of their way to make them feel valued. NHRD-branded USB memory sticks containing the videos and mariachi ringtone were also sent to 20 leading tech voices around the world, who acted as catalysts to push awareness and conversation around the campaign, and extend the positive WOM ripple to global networks.

Measurement and Evaluation

WOM tracking tools were used to follow conversation across social media analysing sentiment, reach and engagement. This helped to demonstrate enhanced visibility for the Nokia N97 Mini device in peer discussion over the campaign period and beyond. 1000heads developed its own WOM tracking tool called WOMtrak which measures the sentiment behind WOM online, helping to produce a more comprehensive analysis of the positive and negative conversations about a product or brand on the web.  

Results

The activity generated 91 per cent positive WOM around the Mariachi campaign and 86 per cent positive WOM around the Nokia N97 mini mobile device. The content reached a combined audience of more than 203,000, with the voices creating more than 31,100 engagements within social media across 27 unique venues, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and forums. The voices also stimulated 41 unique episodes of conversation and original video content about Nokia, the N97 Mini and the Mariachi campaign.

Grindrod concluded: ““We were proud to be involved in the Nokia N97 Mini Mariachi campaign. It produced entertaining video content, and tapped into the passions and interests of key Nokia voices around the world, allowing Word of Mouth to spread. The engaging online content recorded the spontaneous emotions from people incredibly passionate about Nokia, making it so compelling, and showing users that Nokia will go out of its way to make customers feel valued.”