At farfar, Nokia was our biggest client - and we worked on a global level for more than 5 years.
Initially our role was to create edgy viral campaigns adding some spice to the larger marketing mix, but over time our footprint increased to include cross-media creative for most of the product ranges: from services to phones, including the more adanced N-Series, the ”business”- phones E-Series and the ill fated N-Gage gaming phone.
While our work initially was based on storytelling, entertainment and viral content we gradually added a more integrated approach where we started to blend content, straight up advertising and brand utility closer to the products.
From 2007, farfar was one of two global lead digital agencies and my role on the account was Executive Creative Director - meaning I worked with a lot of stakeholders at various Nokia offices - for the most part the awesome team in Espoo, but also London and Berlin as well as local markets and with different partner agencies.
The World's Biggest Signpost
A social layer on Nokia (Ovi) maps - now known as Bing Maps
Putting Nokia Maps on the map.
Part marketing stunt, part service - ”Get to the Good Things” for Nokia Maps was based on a simple concept that was developed as one of the most vertically integrated efforts for Nokia ever. It is based social mapping and people sharing avourite spots and to engage people through interesting and simple ways of accessing them - not least a giant arrow located in London and showing locations supplied though the social mapping service.
Stories and systems working together.
The power of fun content and storytelling connected to the product and service became more central to gaining traction without spendinng media money. Nokia was ahead of the game in adopting a community based strategy over pushing messages through media spend. ”The world is my canvas” used comedy and live online events showed the Nokia N82 photos and GPS capabilities to create ”Position art” with the made up artist Stavros, with a nod towards Christo.
Engagement with a simple message
For the pivot of N-Gage from a hardware concept to a service and software, we shifted to a broader more casual appeal and tapped into the combination of the world’s first mobile hit - ”Nokia Snake” in combination with a simple and straight forward message. ”Get out and play” was executed as an interactive stop-motion live action film that gained massive traction online with zero media spend.
The second most awarded digital campaign of 2007.
Emotional relevance over features.
One of many unconventional ways of promoting new handsets for the work-oriented E-series label, the Unloader was a function that let office workers ”take revenge” on unwanted emails and documents and get peronalized videos showing fun destruction of said documents. A shredder on steroids.
Games and product marketing online
2005, this ”back to school” activation for Nokia N-Gage had a tongue-in-cheek take on learning by turning school texts into mobile games, whilst also allowing you to create your own version of the game and download to your N-Gage. Pre-app store and pre-smartphone as we know it
Throughout 2004 to 2006 we did what we could using fun and engaging communication to negate the flaws in the N-Gage product. Arguably N-Gage was too early and too flawed to make it, but it did pave the way for mobile gaming.
