Stories, Numbers & ConversationsNokia’s principles for social media marketing
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Contents
Foreword 3
Introduction: Social is the shift 5
A world of networked change 6
Social media and the business of marketing 7
Guiding principles for Nokia’s social media marketing 13
Principle 1. Consider the social opportunity in everything we do 14
Principle 2. Engage in better conversations with more consumers 16
Principle 3. Deliver personal experiences (be authentic) and earn trust 19
Principle 4. Sharing is more important than control 21
Principle 5. Define clear objectives from the outset 23
Principle 6. Invest and commit to social presences 26
Conclusion 28
Contents
Foreword 2
Introduction: Social is the shift 3
A world of networked change 4
Social media and the business of marketing 6
Guiding principles for Nokia’s social media marketing 12
Principle 1. Consider the social opportunity in everything we do 14
Principle 2. Engage in better conversations with more consumers 18
Principle 3. Deliver personal experiences (be authentic) and earn trust 22
Principle 4. Sharing is more important than control 26
Principle 5. Define clear objectives from the outset 33
Principle 6. Invest and commit to social presences 30
Conclusion 36
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©2012 Brilliant Noise - all rights reserved
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Foreword
The disruptive wave that is social media has swept through the business world at an incredible rate. It has prompted an accompanying deluge of commentary and thinking from business and marketing strategists alike.
While theory is useful, nothing has the practical usefulness of watching an organisation working things out for itself. In Nokia, we were fortunate to have that opportunity and are even more fortunate to have been given permission to share the results.
Nokia wants to take social media beyond marketing tactics to driving transformational
change throughout its whole organisation, becoming a social business. Working closely
with Nokia insiders we set about articulating what the company was doing right in social
and the challenges it faced.
The result is an account of one organisation’s global strategic approach to social media,
and the principles it has chosen to guide its efforts. There are elements here, challenges
and opportunities, that are specifically about Nokia, but there is also a great deal that
any organisation, of any size, in any sector, will identify with.
We’re grateful to Nokia for allowing us to publish our observations and insights in this way.
Craig Hepburn, Nokia’s Director, Digital & Social Media explained why:
“I felt it was important for us to share much of what the team found across the
wider marketing, social media and business community. Sharing is such a vital
part of the social web – it felt like the right thing to do to have our thoughts and
lessons published in this way..”
It does seem appropriate that an organisation with ambitions to embrace social media so
fully is happy to share what it has learned in this way. Nonetheless it is a bold step.
We hope you find it useful.
Antony Mayfield
Founding Partner, Brilliant Noise
“I felt it was important for us to share much of what the team found across the wider marketing, social media and business community. Sharing is such a vital part of the social web – it felt like the right thing to do to have our thoughts and lessons published in this way.”
Craig Hepburn
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A world of networked change
Looking back to the stories that have dominated the recent news agenda around the world,
many have had an explicit social media element, or one that lies just below the surface.
Companies fall to public outrage; news cycles and political establishments are swept
along at speed by spontaneous movements on Twitter and Facebook; activists force
transparency on states and organisations on a massive scale.
In some political upheavals, social media played a role not just technically but culturally.
It changed people’s expectations of how they could organise, of what was possible. Even
when authorities, in some cases, “turned off the internet,” the communities of dissent that
had sprung up found other ways to communicate, connect and organise.
What is social media?
What exactly “social media” is can be hard to pin down, but it is important that we begin
by outlining how Nokia thinks about it and what the organisation’s common definitions
are. Some people talk about “social computing”, “social technologies” 1 or the “social web”
instead of “social media”. Nokia sticks with the latter, because it is the most commonly
used term to describe this change phenomenon.
There are three elements, which the term “social media” covers in this booklet:
Tools and platforms: Most commonly accepted definitions - from Wikipedia to
dictionaries - characterise social media as a set of online tools and services.
The state of the web and computing: The web itself is social - it is designed to be open
and to connect. Social media is a way of describing computing as a many-to-many
medium.
A mindset: Social media brings about a need to think differently. The importance of
connectedness, openness, collaboration and being useful to our networks become clear
elements of success in a social media world.
1 Nigel Fenwick of Forrester puts a good case for “social technologies” in his blog post The Social Ecosystem
(http://goo.gl/gSrJQ), but perhaps this even more appropriate for him as his audience is primarily CIOs
Introduction: Social is the shift
Today, social media describes a set of deep challenges to the way marketing - and
business - operates. It also presents powerful opportunities to reach and engage
customers. It is with this perspective that Nokia has committed itself to adapt its thinking,
approach, systems and practices.Social media describes, and is a key part of, a shift in
power and relationships between organisations and individuals, whether we are looking at
media and audiences, governments and citizens or brands and customers. The whole world
is changing fast.
Adapting to the social media world is an imperative for Nokia, and not least for those
involved in its marketing and communications functions. Nokia needs to understand where
it is going, how it changes the game for its business, its brand and its products & services.
Nokia already “does social” quite well. It is regularly recognised by analysts and industry
experts alike for its social media prowess. Nokia’s products and services are intrinsically
social, connecting people to each other and the web.
It has learned and done a lot, but when we can see change and opportunity coming at the
scale and pace of the web and social media, companies like Nokia need to be restless, and
look ahead to anticipate where it could be, where it needs to be, in order to succeed in
increasing brand awareness, consideration, preference, and loyalty.
Eventually social media will be so much a part of everything Nokia does that its employees
won’t need to think about it, it will run through every conversation and function of the
business. For now, however, social media represents a shift - a shift in media, commerce
and society - that demands a bold and ambitious response.
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Social media and the business of marketing
At its simplest, the challenge everyone faces with social media in marketing is that we need
to re-learn our trade. Being expert in one-to-many marketing is not enough. Nokia, like
many organisations, needs to re-think its planning, investment, execution and measurement
in order to succeed. This is because we are all now operating in a world where many-to-
many communication is increasingly important.
Nokia’s efforts in social media need to be addressed at a systemic level. Nokia needs to re-
think how it does marketing, centring its focus on the things that have changed.
Look at the marketing element of Nokia’s business - like so many other major brands - and
you might be convinced that this business was basically “advertising plus support”. Paid
messages dominate budgets, thinking and strategy for everything from brand building to
specific product promotion, and everything in between.
If social media is simply thought of as “ media”, a replacement or an adjunct of existing
paid media systems of marketing, Nokia, and others will miss a bigger opportunity: to
understand how the world is changing, how its consumers are changing and how the
business itself can change too.
So far, little has changed in the way Nokia tries to earn the attention of its consumers.
Despite some of its effort in social media marketing, it has been relatively modest
compared to the might of its broader marketing efforts.
Consumer behaviour has fundamentally changed, requiring Nokia to change as well
For all of the uncertainty and noise about social media there are a few of things we can be
sure of:
– A new set of consumer behaviours have emerged and are here to stay.
– Social media usage is growing and will likely continue to do so.
– Influence is shifting from organisations into networks and crowds.
Nokia’s customers use social media in all kinds of ways. It is important to them as a way of
finding information, staying informed, communicating, engaging with brands, communities
of interest, and with each other, and getting things done. Conversely, social media enables
Nokia to be closer to its customers, expand the reach of its messages, and pick up signals
or direct feedback that enable faster product innovation and improvement.
Beyond the changes in the way Nokia’s customers are using social media, as an
organisation Nokia also needs to consider changes in its own behaviour. In every aspect
of the business, social media has a role to play, even if it is just in helping teams to share
information efficiently, and collaborate more effectively.
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The Stakeholder Decision Journey
One significant driver of a change in how Nokia thinks about
marketing is the spread of the “stakeholder decision journey”
as an idea and a useful model for thinking about marketing
investment.
For the past few decades, a great deal of marketing at Nokia
and other major brands has been organised around the
notion of a sales funnel. Today, the forces of technology and
media change require companies to reassess the consumer’s
relationship with brands and their products and services.
They have also forced different kinds of communications to
reach and affect consumer decisions at different points.
In his seminal article for the Harvard Business Review,
McKinsey’s David C Edelman describes a new model to
replace the funnel, called the Consumer Decision Journey
(which Nokia has adapted this to the “stakeholder decision
journey” to include important non-consumer audiences)2.
Edelman describes three ways marketers can support
consumers in their journey:
Edelman says that the “Consider” and “Buy” points in the
journey are often over-emphasised by marketers, resulting in
over-investment in advertising and retail promotions to raise
awareness. However, consumers take many cues from other
consumers via social media, especially product reviews.
Making it easier and even more desirable to spread positive
feedback to other consumers can be more powerful than
advertising.
Social media has a potential role at every point across the
consumer journey, especially during what the model calls
the “Advocate” stage. Marketers have under-valued, and
therefore under-invested in activity which will encourage,
facilitate and spread consumer advocacy. Social media
marketing can provide Nokia with tools that can help to
redress this imbalance.
2 Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places,
by David C Edelman - Harvard Business Review, December 2010
BOND
ADVOCATE EVALUATE
ENJOY
BUY
CONSIDER
Consumer Decision Journey model
- used with the kind permission of McKinsey & Co.
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What does social media mean for Nokia as a whole, beyond the marketing team?
Nokia has started to explain social media in terms that make sense to non-marketing
specialists. When the jargon and technical language of marketing and the web are stripped
away there are three their employees talk about:
Stories: The elaboration of the large and small ways in which Nokia and its products and
services are changing people’s lives. Content assets, insights, folklore, the scattered matter
that makes up what the brand is both for its employees and its customersStories bring to
life the essence of Nokia’s brand for customers and employees alike.
Conversations: The connections with customers and other influencers online; the
dialogue that keeps us open and honest; the conversations between customers that
we can learn from.
Numbers: The data and insights that flow from Nokia into the social web and vice versa;
the measures and evaluation methods to understand what is happening and how decisions
can be made.
These three are a loose but useful construct with which to think about social media and the
value it can deliver. At the planning, execution and evaluation stages, Nokia must look at
its social media marketing activity through each of these lenses. Where are the stories that
will be valued and passed onto others? What conversations are taking place, how do they
need to be supported, how can the connections be sustained? Where are the numbers, the
data and insights that help the people within Nokia to understand what is happening, the
opportunities to learn and adapt, and the impact on the business?
There is an echo from the opening of Guy Kawasaki’s amazing book, The Art of the Start:
How to Start Anything Anywhere3. Kawasaki, one of the leading lights in the original Apple
Macintosh project and subsequently a venture capitalist, applies the Silicon Valley start-up
mind-set to any new endeavour in his book.
At the outset, he says that in any successful endeavour you will find meaning and mantra.
The meaning is the insight, the imperative for action, and the mantra is the guiding thought
that people repeat to themselves to help shape their actions. For those in the marketing
teams at Nokia, the meaning must be “social is the shift”, while the mantra should be
“stories, conversations, numbers...”.
3 See the website of the book for more http://www.guykawasaki.com/the-art-of-the-start/
Nokia can also take this idea and extend it to other important stakeholders - like potential
hires, developers, retailers - thinking about the way that the people within the business
build relationships and trust with partners in its product and business ecosystems.
Nokia’s brand, and its reputation, is an outcome of building trust in the relationship with
its consumers. When they look for Nokia and try to communicate with the organisation in
social media Nokia needs to be there. It is an inexcusable, missed opportunity if it is not.
It is across the Stakeholder Decision Journey that Nokia must structure its marketing
efforts, treating every touch-point with the consumer - from the first brand message they
see to contacting support staff - as an opportunity to reinforce the Nokia brand, and foster
more attachment to its product and services.
Perhaps most of all, the opportunity lies in the important role that social media can play in
“advocacy” - people who have positive experiences with Nokia products and services and
want to share that enjoyment and satisfaction with others. For Nokia to have these kinds
of connections with its consumers greatly expands the opportunity for word-of-mouth
messages to spread further and faster.
Social media in the Stakeholder Decision Journey
Marketing is where Nokia’s organisation encounters the social web first. So the marketing team
at Nokia have an important role to play in two ways beyond the normal functions of marketing.
First, Nokia’s marketing teams can practically support other parts of the business with the
insights they gain from actively listening to consumers in social media.
Second, those teams can pass on the lessons they learn about how to work with social
media: what’s needed in terms of skills and capabilities, how to build networks and
communities, and how to effectively manage many-to-many communications.
Nokia’s marketing teams must focus on the Stakeholder Decision Journey in their planning
for social media marketing. At the same time they must remain mindful of the need to
support the rest of the business, and the product development teams.
In social media marketing, Nokia should be looking for two valuable behaviours as signs
(and causes of) success:
– More interaction between Nokia employees and its consumers
– More consumers talking to each other about Nokia
Both of these behaviours support and enable advocacy and recommendation, ultimately
the most effective kind of marketing. They are both also evidence of a growing ecosystem
of conversations and relationships.
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Guiding principles for Nokia’s social media marketing
In this section we cover Nokia’s six guiding principles for its current and future activity in
social media. For each principle we will describe the organisation’s ambition, the way it
should play out in its behaviour and marketing approach, some best-practice guidance
for Nokia’s marketing teams, and some illustrative examples of the ways in which Nokia is
already using each principle.
Nokia’s guiding principles
1. Consider the social opportunity in everything we do
2. Engage in better conversations with more consumers
3. Deliver personal experiences, be authentic, and earn trust
4. Sharing is more important than control
5. Define clear objectives from the outset
6. Invest and commit to social presences
Nokia’s employees use the principles to help in the following ways:
A starting point for strategy: These principles can be used as a starting point for thinking
about how social media can be used within the organisation’s marketing campaigns, and
it’s “always-on” consumer engagement activities.
Nudges for planning: Almost all of Nokia’s marketing efforts will, in some way, involve
social media. These principles can act as a memory-aid during planning. They will support
people within the business to consider the social dimension, to reveal opportunities to
harvest and use more stories, to gather more numbers, and to create more conversations
through marketing.
Challenge existing tools: Nokia’s employees should throw these phrases into discussions to
allow time to stop and think about the decisions that are being made. They may not resolve
every argument, but they will help focus on what is most important (if in doubt, that’s the
customer).
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Principle 1. Consider the social opportunity in everything we do Social media should never be an afterthought in any marketing activity - it needs to be a
consideration from the outset. Right at the start of the planning phase, marketers need to
ask what they can learn about their consumers from social media, what role the social web
will play at each stage of their experience of the brand and what are they out to achieve by
way of brand or product or service awareness, consideration, or preference.
Consumer experience involves bringing social media into what Nokia produces, markets,
and sells: from handsets to services; listening to consumers; providing information and
support when and where the consumer is most receptive to being engaged. But also taking
this principle beyond the marketing team; embedding it throughout the organisation. Every
time the organisation has contact with the consumer, every product it produces, in the way
it recruits, social media will have a role to play.
This means that:
– Nokia’s employees need to understand how to initiate relevant conversations with
consumers rather than broadcast, or speak at them.
– Nokia’s products and services can often be inherently social, enabling people,
through its technology, to have conversations, share stories among their networks of
friends, colleagues and families.
– Nokia’s employees need to understand social as a mind set - authentic, useful
conversations with consumers - not simply as platforms.
What this means for Nokia’s marketing
Nokia’s marketing function plays a critical role within the company, from informing product
concepts driven by consumer research and insight, to generating product awareness,
consideration, and demand, to actively engaging customers throughout their Nokia
experience in order that they feel more connected to Nokia and its products and services.
In many cases, social has been an important product and service design consideration for
Nokia. For example, Nokia Life Tools, a collection of information services about agriculture,
health, education and entertainment delivered by SMS to customers in developing markets,
was developed with an understanding of how it would be used socially to connect
individuals to information and to each other. The service has grown at an exponential rate,
driven largely by word of mouth recommendation.1.
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After a purchase, Nokia is committed to help its customer’s get the most out of their
experience, including effectively resolving customer issues, taking advantage of the myriad
mobile and web-based services that complement their mobile device, and support their
ability and desire to talk about and share their Nokia experience, and possibly recommend
Nokia to others. The use of social media is at the core of these endeavours for Nokia
There are other ways that Nokia has developed a social perspective in its interaction with
its consumers, and other stakeholder communities, as well as within the organisation itself:
– Online professional and peer reviews (expanding the reach of user-generated content)
– Online customer assistance and support (live chat in customer care)
– Enabling easy online purchasing of Nokia products (social commerce in Facebook)
– Talent acquisition (dedicated recruitment staff who are expert in social media)
– Crowd-sourcing (soliciting ideas for mobile innovations from internal and
external communities)
– Developer engagement (programs that crowd-source innovations to assist in key
challenges faced by developing markets and support to commercialise them)
Case study: Nokia’s Tron sponsorship
In 2010 Nokia sponsored the Disney box-office smash Tron with Nokia devices featured in
the movie (a sequel to the cult 80’s classic). Nokia made the very most of its sponsorship
through point-of-sale, digital and ATL (above the line) promotions but also put social right
at the heart of the project. For example, Nokia’s access to exclusive content, such as a
Nokia version of the trailer, was used to inspire a “takeover” of key Nokia social presences
(Facebook, twitter and blog) by the fictional Encom business that features in the movie.
Users from the target gaming audience were challenged to solve clues left in binary and
Konami Code (appealing to the movie’s fans) to unlock the exclusive content.
The activity not only drove over 150% increase in daily activity on Nokia’s Facebook page,
it attracted a new audience: 70% of those engaged in the Tron campaign on Facebook had
never spoken about Nokia before. There were over 80,000 participants in this conversation
during a single day at the height of activity.
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Principle 2. Engage in better conversations with more consumers Important elements of the consumer’s experience with Nokia take place within social
media. These are the places where consumers review Nokia’s products for the benefit of
others, where they share their experiences of the product and the brand, both positive and
negative. Everyone in the business should listen to and be involved in this conversation.
Nokia is starting to empower its employees to participate in conversations in social media
in order to maximise the value of those direct interactions for both the communities of
Nokia users and the business itself. Nokia acknowledges that the conversation must begin
with actively listening to what is being said in social places.
Marketing and communications are the natural places to begin with social media, but this
is not the only area within Nokia that needs to engage in social. The social media teams
within Nokia are providing value across the business by sharing their learnings with other
teams and helping Nokia employees across the organisation connect with consumer
communities.. Whether it is a support representative helping a frustrated customer or
an engineer listening to the heartfelt plea for a new feature from a fan of their service,
engaging in dialogue with consumers as a common operating principle is something Nokia
is moving towards quickly.
What this means for Nokia’s marketing
The challenge is to empower employees to engage in direct conversations with consumers,
without confusing them with conflicting information. Similarly, Nokia needs to avoid
bewildering people within the organisation by asking them to use social media when they
aren’t comfortable with representing Nokia in the social web.
Education and support is the key
This has started with the roll-out of Socializer, a system using listening tools to provide a
real-time action framework for marketing, Agora (a 6 plasma-screen installation showing
visualisations of real-time conversations on the social web), and powerful reporting and
analytics tools. (See box out below for more detail.) It is also a system to help Nokia to
listen and respond quickly to consumers. It focuses on the most significant conversations
about a variety of hot topics – for example battery life – and brings it to the attention
of the right people within the organisation, in real-time, to respond and react. Initially
launching in a few countries, the aim is to get the most appropriate person to respond
2019
The Engagement layer serves a dual purpose: 1) it gives Nokia’s employees information in
real time, so they can take action in a timely manner with a human voice. Invariably, when
talking to customers, Nokia’s marketing and communications teams require information
and input from other teams across the organisation: design, product development,
product marketing, developer support, customer service, etc. This layer of the Socializer
tool provides the infrastructure to do this in a transparent way, encouraging collaboration
between different departments.
3. Analyser – this layer of the system provides employees with access to listening and
reporting tools (powered by Radian6 and other monitoring tools). It does the “heavy-
lifting” work of data analysis so that Nokia’s marketing and communications teams can
understand trends, issues, opportunities and patterns in conversation and behaviour in the
social web.
Case study: Nokia’s participation in Social Media Week
Nokia is the global sponsor of Social Media Week, which takes place in 12 cities around the
world. In 2011 Nokia had employees on the ground in 6 of these cities. The organisation
used the event as an opportunity to develop its “random acts of kindness” approach to
creating advocacy. This is a strand of activity where the marketing team listens to what
customers and influencers are saying on personal level – things like missing an flight or a
toothache – and looking for relevant opportunities to respond in a human way.
So for example, a blogger with a nasty toothache was sent a dental health kit and a
friendly “get well soon” message from Nokia. Meanwhile Tweeters were asked to use the
#NokiaConnects hashtag and random consumers were given small gifts such as pizza
deliveries or even new mobile phones, depending on their situation.
Developing this theme, attendees at various events were invited to check in to the Nokia
vending machine, using Foursquare. The machine gave anyone checking in treats – ranging
from sweets to the latest Nokia phones.
500 people checked in to the vending machine and the reach of the #NokiaConnects tag
was estimated at 2.1 million Twitter users.
A connected content strategy meant that the real world interactions – sending small gifts
randomly – became digital content assets that could be used across all of Nokia’s social
media platforms, greatly amplifying the message and the conversation.
directly to Nokia’s consumers on any given topic. Who that person is will depend on the
subject – it could be anyone from an expert in a specific technology area to a customer
care representative.
By putting Agora in open spaces around the company, such as in the cafeteria area at the
headquarters in Espoo, Finland, Nokia is giving a public demonstration of its willingness
to listen, and signalling to its employees that this is something that is encouraged within
the business’s culture. The Socializer process is transparent, so everyone within Nokia can
see who is responding to consumer queries. This acknowledges the people who are most
active in social media and encourages employees to “wear their achievements on their
sleeve”, by earning badges on their Socializer profiles.
Nokia’s Socializer system – what is it?
Nokia’s Socializer system is designed to give employees the right social media information,
in the right format, at the right time, so that they can take ownership of and action a
direct-to-consumer response. It is how Nokia seeks to support employees to make human
connections with customers in social spaces on the web.
Socializer has three layers:
1. Visualisation – powered by the Agora tool, displayed on plasma screens in three key
locations in Finland, UK and US. The screens display visual data to help employees see and
understand the conversation between Nokia and its consumers. They show data about
Nokia’s own content (blogs, Twitter, Facebook and so on); data about customer responses
and their own content (images, videos and so on created on Nokia phones); data about
conversation about Nokia’s products; data on Nokia’s overall share of conversation in
relation to key competitors.
The visualisation layer serves a dual purpose: to keep everyone in the core communications
areas up-to-speed on current conversations, but also to educate and inspire Nokia’s wider
group of employees to the increasing volume of commentary happening across the social
web. The Agora screens say: “this is how we are engaging in smarter and more responsive
conversations with our customers”.
2. Engagement – this layer is a real time action framework to enable employee
engagement across Nokia. Keyword driven alerts are created by the Socializer system
when there is a change in the average volume of conversation around a given topic. The
Nokia employee who receives the alert can then: analyse the data – to understand what’s
happening and how urgent the situation is, choose to “claim” the action to resolve the
situation or capitalise on the opportunity, and invite colleagues to join the conversation and
contribute to the action plan.
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Principle 3. Deliver personal experiences (be authentic) and earn trust
Trust is the lifeblood of any brand. Each step the consumer takes in a deepening
relationship with a brand is made as a consequence of trust. This reaches its extreme at
the moment a consumer advocates a brand.
For Nokia, trust comes through building one to one relationships, but also by using
networks and technology to scale personal experiences for its consumers. Connections
can come with an individual consumer via a “random act of kindness” that will surprise and
delight them (see the case study for Principle 2 for further details). It might create a story
that may spread through their network of friends and colleagues.
Similarly, when Becky Gloyne, Nokia’s Global Talent Manager connects with people in
LinkedIn Groups and on Twitter who are interested in Nokia as an employer, she shares
news and information about what working for the company is like. She is able to create a
personal experience with a multitude of people using the network effects of social media.
Both of these examples start with a personal interaction, but have wider impact and
influence, because they are personal in tone and intent and therefore suited to social
media. The nature of social media is that these interactions can be shared with a much
wider group of people. On the social web you ‘give love to get love’. By engaging in
authentic, relevant conversations with individuals you can generate a sense of “kudos” or
goodwill that will spread via the network effect intrinsic to the social web.
In one-to-many (traditional) media and marketing, messages were designed for reach. In
the one-to-one and many-to-many modes of communication, these kinds of messages
sound hollow, inauthentic and are frequently ignored. Social media marketing is not
designed for a notional individual or group, but for people you can connect with. In fact,
you may already be connected with them. So Nokia will be focusing its energies on helping
its employees use a conversational tone that is humble and authentic.
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What this means for Nokia’s marketing
The tone and mode of communication that comes from being personal, from acting with a
genuine desire to earn the trust of consumers online one by one, is very different. It is much
more subtle. It’s not about “big splashes” and peaks of activity. In this new, personalised
world of communication, the ideal approach is made in small consistent moves, adding up
to a greater shift overall.
Returning to the Stakeholder Decision Journey (see section entitled Social Media and the
Business of Marketing), the role that social plays in earning and encouraging advocacy is
perhaps its most significant contribution to marketing and the business as a whole. Making
it personal for Nokia is essentially about flipping priorities. Nokia is moving from being
focused on the potential of a message to the potential of every single consumer experience
with the brand. In this way, Nokia can create a personal story, and potentially an advocate
for its brand.
Nokia’s work here has already begun. Within Nokia’s marketing community, the
organisation regularly connects with around 5,000 influencers in its online network already.
On an individual consumer and product level, Nokia has begun to deliver personalised
experiences too. Nokia has a community management team who are focused on engaging
directly with consumers. It also has the Nokia Connect team who are working to engage in
conversations with influencers around the world.
Case study: Nokia Follow Friday
Follow Friday is a tradition among Twitter users where (each Friday) people recommend
people to follow, attaching the #FF tag to their Tweets.
The first special Nokia Follow Friday (#FF) stemmed from a social media team day out
in Espoo in Finland. The planned activity was to spend a day learning to become graffiti
artists. There was an opportunity to share this experience with a larger group than the
social media team itself. The team created a huge, visually engaging graffiti art mural and
included the Twitter names of a few dedicated and engaged Nokia advocates on Twitter. A
photo of the mural was posted on Twitter to mark the first official Nokia Follow Friday.
The response from those who were tagged in this way was extremely positive. It is
estimated that the reach of the conversation around this activity on Twitter was 1 million
interactions. The cost of this activity was zero – since it was content generated as part of a
team day that had already been organised.
Since then, similar Follow Friday stunts in the real world – FF word games, FF sticky note
art – have been used to generate digital content and conversations with much success.
This is a simple and authentic way for Nokia to show its appreciation to fans, build stronger
relationships and show them that there is more to Nokia than a global corporation.
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Principle 4. Sharing is more important than control To succeed in social media Nokia understands that control is less important than sharing,
being open, and creating connections and value in its ecosystem. This principle of
sharing, and therefore letting go of control, also applies across wider social networks with
consumers, partners and peers.
Nokia’s culture is one of openness, transparency and where interaction and conversation in
social spaces on behalf of the brand are encouraged. Nokia believes there are commercial
benefits to letting go, opening up, being open to consumer feedback, listening, and
responding in a human way. Consumers want this kind of interaction. In return, Nokia
enjoys the benefits: greater customer insight and more profound and long lasting
relationships. A culture of sharing allows Nokia to do a better job.
For Nokia, “marketing” is no longer about controlling the customer journey on its own
terms. In the era of one-to-many, broadcast dominated marketing, the emphasis was on
controlling the consumer experience of the brand. Now Nokia must put the emphasis on
being useful in its networks, amplifying or linking-out to content that adds value to its
ecosystem when and where appropriate.
Making sharing a part of its culture, in marketing and more broadly within the company,
means developing it as a skill, an instinct, a kind of digital literacy. Nokia’s employees must
develop an approach to sharing which makes them say “what are we not going to share?”,
rather than “what can we share?”.
This is about a shift in mindset, from the old way of working to a new way of working. Not
everyone in Nokia understands this yet. Those leading the culture shift at Nokia require the
support of the leadership team to help make change pervasive.
When Stephen Elop became CEO of Nokia, he used the organisation’s internal micro-
blogging platform, Socialcast, to begin a conversation with employees. The platform had
not been widely used up until this point. His public endorsement of the tool – and his open
and honest conversation within it– sent a clear signal to everyone in the business. Usage
doubled in the month following his first post.
What this means for Nokia’s marketing
Sharing must be the default. In the age of the social web, it is humble - and intensely
pragmatic - for an organisation like Nokia to acknowledge that it cannot control everything
that happens to its data, content, or even its brand, once they are released into the 4.
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networks of the web. On the web, everything is open and the risks of being inauthentic and
dishonest are disastrous for a brand. There are infamous examples from other organisations
where fakery has been exposed. The damage to these brands continue to this day...
For example, Nokia can’t afford to overstate the performance of a new device or service, a
trap that many companies easily fall into: critics (and fans) will call the business out online.
Over-promising, evasion and groundless boasting are behaviours that might have been
tacitly celebrated in the ‘Mad Men’ era of advertising, and are still exhibited by companies
even within Nokia’s industry. In the age of social networks these are toxic, corrosive and
self-defeating behaviours.
Nokia is embracing these changes by encouraging a culture of sharing and openness in its
marketing. For example, during the launch of Nokia’s Lumia portfolio, fans on Facebook
were invited to upload pictures that they felt illustrated the campaign theme: “the Amazing
Every Day”. By uploading their own pictures they granted Nokia the rights to use them as
part of the ongoing campaign. And in return, Nokia gave away prizes and the “kudos” of
exposure to a global audience. Here the “give love to get love” principle is clear. Nokia’s
consumers get recognition and response for their contribution, and Nokia gets high quality,
authentic campaign material at very low cost.
It’s liberating, in a sense, to leave behind the broadcast media illusions and pretences of
control and insist that we have no option other than to be completely open, clear and
authentic.
Case study: Nokia Shorts 2011
Nokia sponsored a short film competition in partnership with Edinburgh Film Festival and
Vimeo, and online social community focused on video creation and sharing.
Participants were asked to submit short films created exclusively on Nokia’s N8 devices.
Eight finalists were selected and each were given $5000 to make a short film.
The winner, Splitscreen: A Love Story, has to date received millions of views online at the
time of writing. More than this, the level of conversation about the N8 has significantly and
permanently increased since the competition.
The rules about content were few, and Nokia had no idea what kind of short films would
end up winning. By taking the risk of opening up the competition instead of simply
commissioning films to showcase the N8, the results were more authentic and creative.
The people who entered the competition spread buzz about all of the films – and by
association the N8 – through their own networks.
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Principle 5. Define clear objectives from the outset
Nokia’s success in social media is underpinned by two things: setting clear objectives and
understanding how to measure results.
Nokia believes that there are two key benefits to its social activity:
– Benefits to brand and product perception: These can be measured by looking at
increases in brand perception, product consideration, product preference, quality of
customer support and responsiveness, and advocacy.
– Commercial value-add: This can be measured by looking at increased online traffic
generation that culminates in a commercial transaction, both online and offline.
In this way the business can put an immediate and tangible financial value on social
activity.
Starting with these clear objectives for social media is critically important. An organisation
like Nokia must always know exactly why it is taking one action over another. It must
understand the outcomes it is working towards. This allows it to see when things are
working and when they aren’t, through the use of clear measurement. Since programmes
are designed with this measurement in mind from the outset, there’s an in-built flexibility
and expectation that they can and will change as a result of this feedback.
We can get caught up in the minutiae of metrics and measurement very easily, especially
when, with social media, there is (a) so much data available, and (b) so much uncertainty
and controversy in the marketing industry about how to measure effectiveness.
A useful way to shake out the cobwebs and preconceptions about measurement is to take
a look at how academics think about the whole subject of measurement. 5.
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What this means for Nokia’s marketing
As author and commentator Brian Solis of Altimeter has eloquently stated, there is no one
single measure of social media ROI. The idea of the ROI of social media marketing is one
that is pursued, grail-like. The absence of a single metric that can tell you the value of your
marketing dollar (or Pound, or Yuan, or Rupee or Euro) is held up as a reason to doubt the
value of social media as a marketing activity at all.
Nokia’s social media marketing must align to the business’s strategic programmes and
initiatives. This means that traditional business performance measures - recruiting more
effectively, sustaining customer lifetime value, innovating new products and services - are
what social media serves to support. Nokia avoids tactical thinking, such as Facebook
‘Likes’ as an end-goal, or measures which in reality signify nothing other than shallow reach
at a campaign level, by tracking measurement via its “Three As” framework..
Focusing on the benefits of social activity to brand, to product, to customer relationships
and advocacy and, of course, to sales, has allowed Nokia to create the right metrics which
reflect the business’s real objectives.
Case study: Nokia’s success with social commerce
Nokia has always been dissatisfied with the idea that ROI for social media activity is hard
to measure. For example, its work to generate referral traffic to commercial domains
directly from Facebook has proved that ROI is tangible and measurable. The next step in
connecting the value of its social activity directly to the generation of revenue.
For example, Nokia’s Facebook has specific objectives:
– Building awareness – measured by traffic
– Engagement – measured, for example, by the number of downloads of an app
– Sales – measured, for example, by the number of pre-orders for a new phone
Results are encouraging: the promotions tab is the most popular after the Wall (the main
page) itself. The average click through rate for a promotion on the Nokia global Facebook
page is 13% and the Lumia’s The X Factor / One Direction promotion generated a 37% click
through rate. In comparison, a typical banner ad click through rate is 0.1%.
Margaret A Miller of the University of Virginia offers the following insight 4:
“ Every time we quote a statistic we are validating the choices made by those
that created them, choices that reflect values and beliefs that we may or may
not share.
Measurement systems are undisputedly useful. ”
First: they permit us to compare… performance
Second: they help us identify good practice and progress
Third: quantification results in a common currency... within a system
Fourth: numbers are a way to tell a complicated story succinctly
In setting up and using measurement systems in social media for any type of activity, it is
useful to return to these purposes.
Nokia can usefully apply its “stories, conversations, numbers,” to the subject of developing
goals and measurement. It should consider how its metrics are helping it to gain insight,
throughout specific pieces of activity, about each of these elements.
Thinking like this can help the business to avoid falling into the trap of focusing on the
biggest, simplest metric. In the days of broadcast media, the reach of a TV show (ratings)
or a publication (circulation) was useful short hand for how many people paid messages
might reach. In social media, the complexity of the medium means Nokia needs to pay
attention to a much wider set of metrics.
For instance, many marketers have become entranced with the number of Facebook ‘Likes’
their brand or product page has. In fact, unless there is interaction with consumers on the
page, a high number of Likes can be next to meaningless. The value is with the quality of
conversations and engagement with consumers above the reach.
On the web, everything is connected. There are two billion users of the web. The potential
reach of anything you post anywhere on the web – be it on a social network or a common
website - is two billion.
Potential reach is, therefore, meaningless. Engagement, conversation, connections, and
actual reach, these are the things that Nokia needs to value and measure. This is reflected
in Nokia’s measurement framework, which tracks metrics through three key stages of
behaviour: Awareness, Appreciation and Action (the “Three As” framework).
4 Mastering Measurement - Margaret A Miller, University of Virginia, Change magazine, July/August 2005
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Principle 6. Invest and commit to social presences
Social media is far from free. It requires different models of investment and measurement
of return than the paid media models that have been at the centre of the traditional
marketing approach.
When social media is not fully understood by marketers, they sometimes see it as free or at
least very low cost. Presence requires commitment. That means planning to sustain a blog,
social network profile or community presence, often over long periods. That may not be
expensive, but it is certainly not free.
Nokia acknowledges that the shift to social demands presence and long-term commitment.
It invests accordingly. Currently there is investment in the tools and infrastructure that
will shift the culture and approach within the organisation significantly and permanently.
Examples include the Socializer system, local community management teams around the
world, and a global social media team.
What this means for Nokia’s marketing
There will always be campaigns in marketing, but campaigns are not enough in social
media. Nokia can’t just show up when it has something to say or something to sell –
conversation in social media requires more than this. It requires a persistent presence, for
Nokia’s employees to be there when its customers want to talk to them, when they have
something to say to them. It means “always-on” listening and response.
One implication of maintaining presences rather than just bursts of campaign activity is
that more investment should be put into platforms and technology to help Nokia maintain
a meaningful presence in social media, to keep the conversations alive, as it were. This
also suggests that resourcing of Nokia’s marketing activity will in the future rely less on
outsourcing to agencies and more on developing in-house expertise, especially in areas like
editorial (stories), community management (conversations) and data analysis (numbers).
Nokia is already investing heavily in these areas.
Another compelling aspect of social media and marketing is using paid media within social
spaces to stimulate conversation and possible engagement. In the past year Nokia has
deployed a growing number of highly successful advertising campaigns in social media and
expects to see more as it learns and refines ideas about what works in these spaces.
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Conclusion
Social media is a vital part of what it means to be a citizen, a consumer, an organisation, a
brand today.
Social media, social technology, will continue to evolve, mutate and bring new
opportunities and risks to companies like Nokia. There is no option but to take the risks
and carefully observe and learn from failures in as transparent a manner as is possible for a
large organisation.
Nokia has three factors at work which may lead to significant success in adapting its
marketing approach to social media:
– Social media is a priority in its marketing and is building a business case for more
investment.
– The spread of the Stakeholder Decision Journey model will help marketers to
understand the importance of social media (and its earned media partner disciplines,
content strategy, word-of-mouth marketing and search engine optimisation).
– Guiding principles: its articulation and adoption of the six principles outlined in this
document will help guide decision making and strategy around the world.
The approach that Nokia is taking is interesting because it is approaching its success so far
with humility and recognising that the primary challenge now is to scale “bright spots” - as
Chip and Dan Heath call them - of successful change in marketing and social media and
scale them across a global organisation.
We hope you find the lessons and ideas they have allowed us to share useful.
Case study: @NokiaConnects advocacy activity on Twitter
One example of investing for the long term, which is currently happening at Nokia, can be
seen in the global Nokia Connects program. As part of this strand of work, Nokia’s global
team of community managers are monitoring Twitter to look for opportunities to open up
conversations with existing and potential advocates.
In one case, an influential blogger in India tweeted to his followers that he was fed up
with his new phone, which was prone to break. As a former Nokia consumer he wondered
aloud to his followers whether he should think about switching back his loyalties. The @
NokiaConnects team spotted this and contacted him, asking him if he would like to trial a
new Nokia phone for a couple weeks, no strings attached.
This single contact generated a very positive outcome. The blogger himself was delighted
to have been contacted. He liked the new phone and wrote several blog posts about it. His
authentic, earned advocacy reached a wide group of people online – people that Nokia
wouldn’t or couldn’t have reached directly itself.
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