Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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Nokia as a company continues to impress me with their initiatives with Social Media and Interaction with customers. From WOMWORLD blogger outreach (of which I was a small and insignificant part) to Nokia Conversations to enabling people like Jan Chipchase, Nokia does phenomenal work.

The latest in series is an initiative for Nokia N96. Yet again, the idea is fairly simple. They took one N96 and decided to send it on a world tour. Unlike a typical world tour where one person has the ownership, they decided to crowdsource it. They would send the phone to an individual. Each person uses it for a week. And passes it on. Along the way people can upload and share videos on OVI channel, Twitter and obviously write about it on their personal blogs.

Fantastic idea. Apart from touching lives of all these people and people around them, the media and content created with this phone over the tour period would not be less than a treasure trove. I really look forward to the output.

The very fact that I as a mere silent spectator am blogging about it, justifies that the experiment is bound to create some hype.

Costs for Nokia? One N96 handset, shipping across the world from point to point, a webserver. Negligible.

Nokia WOMWorld sent me a Nokia E66 to review (read other reviews on E66 here) and after a lot of hick-ups and delays, here is the review. And with the advantage of hindsight, the review is all the more pertinent now since E66 been launched in India recently and lots of users would be looking for reviews on this handset.

Nokia E66 is yet one of those sliders from the E series family. The E-series is known for its ease of use and intuitive interface. E66 offers full multimedia and Internet experience with its wide display and high-resolution screen. It is a true office use phone with support for popular file formats like pdf, doc and xls etc.

Coming down to positives and negatives,

Positives

1. Looks. It looks really impressive. In any meeting, people noticed the device and were actually curious about it. The display is brilliant. The metallic finish is awesome. Further, I loved the grip on the handset. It fitted perfectly in my palm and I dint have to clasp it too hard or too loose. It felt like an extension of my hand. Very comfortable to hold.
2. Office Applications. Has all the applications one might need for productivity preloaded on the phone. Obviously you could download more from the Internet and use one of the many connectivity options (Bluetooth, wifi, 3G, infrared).
3. Integration and Memory Usage. Love the way applications install with one click. It is easy to update them, remove them and then again reinstall them. In fact if you run more than 5 applications at the same time, the phone still works fine. This is in contrast with other phones that I have used in past.
4. Long battery life. It easily had more than 24 hours of standby time and about 10 hours of talk time. I did not measure it with a stopwatch but I don’t charge my phone very often and in the entire month I used it, I never ran out of battery.

Negatives

1. Bad camera. Although the phone boasts of a 3 MP camera, the image quality is surprisingly bad. I expected the camera to be better.
2. Keypad. Although ergonomics dont permit a QWERTY keypad, the regular keypad becomes a hindrance for an office phone. There are times when I wanted to write emails but could not because its too cumbersome and time consuming to write emails on a regular keypad.
3. Accelerometer is buggy. There are quite a few times when you rotate the phone and the display freezes. It takes good 3-4 seconds to come back to normal and by that time you are almost frustrated.
4. Snooze time is 5 mins. I hated this bit. I am used to snooze time of 10 mins and getting up is a long process. But with this device, I missed quite a few meetings because I would simply turn the alarm off (rather than get pissed off at a 5 min snooze).
5. Too expensive for Indian market?

Price

• I don’t know about the MRP on this phone but most of the retail outlets are selling this phone for about 20K in India. I find this price point for a Nokia E66 really steep. For 20 grand you can actually go for a Nokia E71. E71 has a CandyBar form factor and has a full QWERTY keypad with almost identical features. And personally I love CandyBars more than Sliders or ClamShells.

Ending Notes
In the end I would give this phone 3 on 5. Although it has lots of features and is probably the best slider available in India right now, the phone lacks a decent camera and is probably priced on the bit higher side. I would recommend it to someone who wants a powerful business phone and does not need a camera.

P.S.: Cant do a technical analysis. If someone wants to write about it, lemme know. Will update the post.

The leading headline for this Friday has to be India’s show at Olympics. We have ended our Olympic run with three medals (One Gold and Two Bronzes). As on today, we are at 45th place (link here). Wrestler Suresh Kumar came out of nowhere and got us a Bronze. Boxer Vijender Kumar got us another Bronze but this one got way too much attention - thanks to a day’s gap and his boyish looks? I will not get into rant about the game and how we need to look beyond these Olympics and prepare ourselves to take on the world in 2012 at London. I would move on to my Hits, Misses and Random Musings section.

Hits

• Blogging Tip: Make sure that the About page on your blog is done really well. I have always placed importance on these pages but Google Analytics for this blog has helped me understand that it is really important. My About page is the most visited page on my blog. I have updated it since but its still work in progress. If you can recommend some changes there, please do.
• Twitter: I have crossed 700 followers on twitter. This is not important to please my ego but this helps me get in touch with more people and more ideas to lift from. Actually I am trying to get the network effect going on for me. More people I follow, more ideas I get, more conversations happen, better is the quality of ideas/work. I actually saw it work for me when I wrote about Nokia’s use of social media and all the people I wanted to read the post, read it.
• Flickr: I recently discovered flickr as an awesome way to conduct secondary research. With people uplaoding all kinds of images on flickr, if you use the right tools, you can mine amazing data. I will post a simple example. I want to know what things are important to people. What if I looked in their bags to determine what all they carried with them? There are few ways to go about this. I can ask them to fill a questionnaire. Or I can ask them to think what would people carry. Or I can simply go to What’s in your bag Flickr group. The possibilities are endless. Its one of those New New Things that I love chasing.

Misses

• iPhone 3G launch in India: Finally after months of waiting, Apple finally launched iPhone 3G in India. It has been priced at Rs. 31, 000 with no mandatory contracts. For an average Indian 31k is very steep and I already know a lot of people who wanted to buy but aren’t because cost is very prohibitive. Also becuase people were waiting to buy a device like and iPhone and its high price, I can see Nokia N96 etc. getting a larger chunk of market share. IMHO there was simply too much hype around iPhone in India. Lessons for marketers? Hype is good. Very good. But not delivering on the hype can make you most ardent fans into die-hard opponents. If you were to fix the entire thing, how would you do it? Is there a way Apple can salvage the situation? Any ideas?
• n00b.in: I was in Delhi and yet could not meet Kunal and decide on the future of n00b.in. Looks like n00b is yet another project that would die an premature death without ever seeing the day of light. I need to somehow salvage it. Off all the ideas that I have ever come across, I am most excited by the possibilities that a place like n00b holds. From content to brands to entertainment to information to geekdom to thoughts, everything is there.

Random Musings

• Rant on Internet: While talking to a colleague about my Cannes trip, I was telling him about seven things that I think are the current trends in advertising (probably most of them are already things of past but they are still very new for India and there is a long long way to go). I think the themes are large enough to actually create a separate blog post on and make a presentation and upload on slideshare. In no order, these are seven things would be
  1. Empowered customers: Customers now know what exactly they want. And if they dont get it, they would make sure that they pester brand owners as long as brands dont deliver it.
  2. Emergence of Personal Media: Its so easy now to create any kind of media at drop of a hat. From blogs to pics to videos to complex mashups, people are trying their hands at everything.
  3. Collaboration: People talk to other people about their lives and brands. Increasingly over the Internet and often with strangers. Participation has gone to an entirely new level altogether where people contribute not for monetary incentives but social currency. Classic example is MadV. More on this on my post on Youtube.
  4. Mashups: Remixing of things to create new things. More on this follows.
  5. Mass Personalization: With technology advancements, it is possible to mass market a product and yet customize it. Simple example could the way you are greeted by your name when you board a Kingfisher flight in India. Why aren’t more brands adopting it? And with personalization, there is no limit to which you can go.
  6. Brand Ownership: Increasingly, marketers and brand owners are giving away the ownership of brands in the hands of the customers. Started with things like Orkut where you could report malicious behaviour of other users to keep the system clean, it has trickled down into main-stream advertising where marketers are giving tools to customers to take the brand forward. In a lot of cases, brands are actually asking customers what should they do with the brand. Most famous example? My Starbucks Idea.
  7. Branded Entertainment: I have spoken about this earlier here. Would not add more gibberish.

• Mashups: I think mashups are the way of the future. More and more companies will make data and APIs available freely and more and more people would allow access to that data. In fact I think everything in future would be publicly available and with easy to deploy and easy to use tools like Popfly and Pipes, creating mashups would become a child’s play. Only constraint would be the imagination. I have to think more on it. Read more on it.

Come to think of it, this weekend could be really interesting if I get time to think on things. I can speak about the 7 new things that can be used in advertising in India, write on Flickr ecosystem, read about mashups and hopefully create some and understood two very important lessons on blogging. Still about 6 hours to go before the end of the week. Might write more.

One fine day I got this email from one womworld.com and it asked me if I would be interested in reviewing a Nokia device. For a minute I thought that it was yet another African Widow Scam or Unknown Heir Spam. But somehow this one looked genuine and I queried other people on twitter. Within minutes I was told that two more known bloggers from India (TwilightFairy and Ashish) have got similar emails (TwilightFairy agreed to review the device, Ashish refused).

Convinced that it is for real, I replied to WOM and surprisingly they shipped the device all the way from London, within 24 hours (with pre-paid ship-back envelope attached :D). They asked me to use it, play with it, test it, review the device and publish the opinion on the blog. And return the device at the end of the day.

Lets evaluate if Nokia’s social media strategy is actually worth it. From what I can see, there are quite a few distinct steps involved in the entire campaign.

1. Identification and Selection of Bloggers

Most probably they are using some kind of algorithm (machine based or human) to make a list of popular bloggers on the Internet. This is how commonsense says they would have approached the problem.

• Identification of few popular bloggers and people who are real active on the Internet. Often known as A-listers, influencers, etc. Conventional wisdom says that these people hold a lot of influence over their contacts and can influence the decision making process.
• Followed by profiling of these people. This is important because I need to know if I should send a business phone or an entertainment phone or an expensive phone to these people.
• Target visitor profiling. Very important because I need to know what kind of visitors does that blog entice and are these the people that I want to sell my product to?

Are there more variables that I need to take care of? And thanks to all the behind-the-scenes magic (or maybe some luck), I got a Nokia E66 to review.

2. Costs and Risk Analysis

Costs and risks are very very important. Before a marketer agrees to spend money on any advertising or communication medium, they need to be assured of the returns. WOM said in their email that the device is worth Euro 500 and I am assuming that shipping costs between London and Mumbai would be another Euro 50 each side. They are thus risking 600 Euros on a review that I might post on my blog that about 20 people read on a daily basis. Is it worth it? To be honest I dont think so. May be I missing something. Any thoughts?

3. Results

I will not talk about technical or usability or features of the phone. They are meant for reviews. Since I am talking about social media strategy, I will talk about only the buzz marketing results.

• I posted few messages on twitter on Nokia E66 and engaged few interesting ones to know more about the device.
• I interacted with about 100 people in these 15 days (friends, colleagues, relatives, meetings with contacts from twitter, orkut, facebook, blogging etc.). Most were curious about the device and I was proud enough to talk to them brag. And I am sure these contacts would have spoken to more people.
• I would post a lot of things about this on my blogs, leave comment on other blogs talking about the same thing and since everything that you put on the Internet is permanent, Nokia E66 is getting a large chunk of my mind-share.

4. Results v 2.0

Results on the individual level are fine but what does the larger picture look like? How can Nokia utilize all these sporadic posts and messages by all these users and fit them in a larger context?

• Nokia is aggregating all posts on the device at one place and making them accessible to the world at large (here). So next time, I need to buy a phone, I would logon to WOM device list and check out feedback from bloggers (real men-next door, honest opinions, real men, non-marketers).
• It is making hundreds of bloggers (who ever is a part of the program) to write about the device on their respective blogs and spread the word within their respective circles of influence. This is as good a publicity as Nokia can buy. Customized, personalized, coming from first contact, personal review and honest opinion. And all these are very vital in building any kind of brand.

5. What next?

• Results? I would love to see the results. I have no clue how would I monitor the costs and ROI but I cant simply give away phones to people (cos even if they are returned in mint condition, they still cant be sold).
• What next? Everything that Nokia has done is very common-sensical and obvious. Is there a way to think of new ideas to get the buzz registers ringing?

And in the end, since I am as magnanimous as anyone the world has ever seen, I want to know why did they pick me. So why me?

• Old Blog? My blog is over 4 years old. Does this help .. ?
• Nokia fandom? I talk about Nokia and other mobile phone devices often on Twitter.
• Razr fandom? Then I keep on posting about my Motorola razr v3i.
• Jan Chipchase? I am a huge fan of one of Nokia’s employee, Jan Chipchase. I keep talking about him all the time and have said it umpteenth time that he’s got my dream job.
• Large circle of influence? I attract some 40 page views daily on my primary blog (mostly from search engines and most people are searching for lyrics and other India centric things) and post about 50 status updats on twitter everyday with about 700 people following me.

Could these things have helped me pop-up in the magic algorithm (if there is any)? Anyways, apart from this off the topic rant, I am really impressed by things that Nokia does on Social Media and activation amongst users and developers. (Talking about developers, two codecamps are coming up in Bangalore and Mumbai - register here).

What are you thoughts on use of Social Media by Nokia? Is the strategy coherent? Does it make sense? Are they correct in their approach? Are the costs worth it?

P.S.: I am yet to publish the review of the device they sent me :D

Every Friday I will now post an update that will talk about the week that went by and what to expect on the coming weekend.

• To begin with, its 08.08.08 and its a date that I will not see for rest of my life (until someone discovers the magic formula that can extend the human life span).
• The date also marks inauguration of Olympics in Beijing, China. India has never done great things in Olympics but this time I think we will come back with at least 5 medals - one from Tennis (Paes n Bhupathi), two from shooters (Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Manavjeet Singh Sandhu), two from boxers (Jitender Singh, Akhil Kumar) and one from Athletics (Anju Bobby George).
• This week also saw the launch of n00b.in blog. More information about n00b.in is available here.

Hits

• Nokia E 66: Nokia sent me a brand new E66 to review on my blog. The device looks awesome, will post a complete review once I have seen most of it, but the best part is the barcode scanner. It can read QR codes and interpret data. I see this as one of the most powerful things for time to come. At Cannes this year, Korean delegates already spoke about the interesting uses they are putting QR Codes to. The possibilities are endless. Will do another detailed post on QR codes. BTW the image on this post is QR code pointing to mt blog. Try it.
• India.Alltop.Com: I bribed my way into India.Alltop.com. This means I need to be more responsible while blogging. I need to produce better content. And I expect more visitors and subsequently more discussions and since they are coming from Alltop, I expect the quality of discussions to be better.

Misses

• Had decided to participate in the Nokia USID competition. Will miss the deadline and end up disappointing self and a very dear friend who had volunteered to help. Had quite a few ideas but could not put them in perspective.

Random Musings

• Indian brands on Twitter: Fasttrack is often quoted as a brand that has done well on Twitter in India. I asked tons of people on twitter about watches and I clearly showed my intentions of buying a watch but they never reached me. Its a fail. Ideally moment I publish this, they should know that I am talking negatively about their brand and they should somehow fix it. Lets see.
• Social Media: Nokia chose me to review one of their devices. Interesting use of Social Media to get bloggers to write about their devices. Few questions, why and how did they choose me? Is this replicable for other brands as well? Is this cost effective (I can always run away with an expensive phone) etc.
• Personal work style: I realized that I relish working at night more than the day time. I think its in the psychology. I think I like the fact that entire world around me is sleeping and I am sneaking ahead of them. I dont want to be part of any race to the top of mountain but I dont know why do I feel like this.
• Wordpress: I am using wordpress for quite sometime now and I think time is ripe to start reading more about it. I will spend this weekend trying to understand wordpress and in process learn a bit of PHP and wordpres moding. Lets see how it turns out.
• TED: TED talks is one of the most wonderful things to have happened to planet since Internet. I am on this mission to see all the talks on the website by end of this year.
• Quarter-Life Crisis: Avery good friend sent this Wikipedia link and everything on that page can summarize what I think. Except “desire to have children” part.
• If I was to tag this post properly, the number of tags on this post will exceed the post size. ;P But what the heck, it helps people find relevant content here and at other places.

P.S.: Inspired in part from Sampad’s Blog. Will update this as and when I remember more things.