The Nokia N8 is a great device, but even though we’ve been writing about it for months, we never realised it was capable of state-of-the-art cryptography as shown at around the 50-second mark in the official trailer…
Nokia wanted to highlight the multimedia capabilities of the devlce, rather than its code-breaking prowess, of course. So here’s how the adverts looked in outdoor campaigns:
And in stores:
And around the web:
Nokia also released a bunch of free content for device owners: two games, a screensaver and wallpapers. If you’re a Nokia N8 owner, then you’ll be aware that the device comes with Tron clips as part of the sample video content.
But when it came to Nokia’s social media properties – its blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts – a different approach was required. You can’t just blatantly advertise to people using these sorts of channels. A lot of the readers are already owners and fans, for one thing. And in any case, their purpose is to engage with customers, establish more personal relationships and have a little fun sometimes.
Instead, there was a return to code-breaking and puzzles. Both the Nseries blog and the Facebook page suddenly sprouted binary and assembly code, rendering the pages temporarily unusable. Nokia followers realised what was happening immediately, having already seen the advertising and on-device content: Encom – the villain of the film – was trying to take over Nokia’s websites.
Then the news emerged, through Twitter, that the code on the site could actually be resolved into a message. This had people racing to crack the code and spreading the buzz through Twitter and blogs. It worked so well that a second round of the competition was swiftly organised, with prizes this time – by this point, the official Nokia Twitter account could only speak in binary. Here on Conversations, we’d managed to obtain some tickets to the LA and London premieres and set up a quick picture puzzle to keep with the codebreaking theme.
The campaign made a big splash. For the Nseries blog, it led to more than 54,000 site visits in 24 hours. On Facebook, the campaign garnered more than 9000 likes and 3000 comments – actually quite a lot more than the initial announcement of the Nokia N8 in April! On Twitter, it was harder to measure, because people didn’t all use the same hashtag, but more than 350 people created updates with the #NokiaTron tag. Over the campaign, more than 60,000 people downloaded Tron themed assets from Ovi Store.
What makes for a success through these channels? The numbers above are certainly one measurement of success. You might also consider that Nokia creating a fun campaign that cheered up a lot of people’s days made it worthwhile. Or maybe you might want to look at the way it caught people’s attention across both social and mainstream media – if we wanted to raise brand awareness, then how much might it have cost through other means to get that sort of coverage? What do you think?