In J.J. Abrams über cool reboot of Star Trek, for a brief but all-too-visible moment, young Kirk gets a call on his in-car Nokia communicator. This is an interesting product placement which seems to backfire.
The car in question is an antique. It's a 50's throwback, fitted with a few high-tech gizmos such as the Nokia device. But this is a film set in the future, and the car is from the past, we can only assume that the communicator is intended to appear somehow retro.
This appears to send out somewhat conflicting messages. It represents Nokia as a company which is unsure of it's position. It tries to establish Nokia as a brand that people will still rely upon in the future, but at the same time it represents itself as a thing of the past.
Ironically, in many ways this is an accurate representation of Nokia's present status. Only a few years ago, Nokia reigned supreme. But it's shocking complacency with its position as market-leader had led to it falling far, far behind the competition. How could a company as huge as Nokia allow Apple, the young upstart in mobile communications, to boldly go and leap light years ahead of them within two years?
Having worked for Nokia in the past, I'm sad to see this state of affairs, but at the same time I'm not in the least bit surprised. Nokia always followed a business plan that was startlingly out of touch with its customers, and relied heavily on a perceived brand loyalty--a brand loyalty that didn't exist.
Nokia's market complacency came at the same time as a design crisis hit the manufacturer. After Frank Nuovo--designer of some of Nokia's most iconic phones--left the company, Nokia released a stream--in fact, more a flood--of poorly designed, ugly, chunky, plastic phones. Phones so without character that artificial means had to be created to spice them up. More plastic could be attached to them which would, Nokia insisted, allow you to 'Xpress Yourself.'
Rather than innovate with the phones themselves, Nokia put millions into developing Club Nokia, a cynical attempt to increase after-market loyalty by selling add-ons, graphics, and ringtones. Wow. Exciting. Cool.
Club Nokia was an unmitigated disaster. It could never consolidate brand loyalty because at that point, there was no brand loyalty. Sony had entered the market, smartening Ericsson's designs. Motorola even innovated with the RAZR. And Nokia? You may find this hard to believe, but they were busy trying to get everyone in the world to make the Club Nokia their home page. Honestly--this was their strategy! Club Nokia would be so much fun, that nobody would want to go anywhere else on the internet except clubnokia.com.
At the time, I was the chief copywriter for Club Nokia. I was dumbfounded. This seemed to me to be the epitome of Nokia's arrogance, complacency, and ignorance. Did they really think people would do that? How could anyone be so out of touch with reality?
It came as no surprise to me that a few years later, Club Nokia was written off as a failure. By then, it was too late. Nokia's zeitgeist had passed. Their phones became unremarkable: too cheap, or too expensive with no innovative features. And then, out of the blue, came the iPhone. Suddenly, every phone Nokia had on the market looked like a relic from the past.
And this is the image we are left with--the marketing image from Star Trek. Nokia. Still around in the future, still behind the times.
[Update: Right on cue, this article from Electronista concerning Nokia's decline in popularity with teens.]
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