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| Home >> Interviews >> Advertising on mobile is still nascent in India - D. Shivakumar, VP and Managing Director, Nokia India |
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Advertising on mobile is still nascent in India - D. Shivakumar, VP and Managing Director, Nokia India
Nokia has been a market leader in the Indian mobile handset market. The brand has had a decade long association with cricket, and is partnering with IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders for the third consecutive year. KKR has managed to remain one of the most popular and sought after franchises in IPL despite losing the matches during the IPLs for the last two years.
Apart from being an aggressive advertiser in cricket, Nokia’s new eco-friendly campaigns have generated a lot of interest. The company’s recycle your phone campaign has also won accolades from the industry.
Nokia in India is headed by D Shivakumar, who is responsible for growing Nokia’s mobile phones business in India and provide it with strategic direction and operational focus. He also focuses on building the Nokia brand, driving partnerships and strategic alliances and developing the capabilities of the Nokia in India. Shivakumar has over 20 years’ experience in consumer products and prior to joining Nokia was heading the Consumer Electronics business for Philips India as Senior VP and Executive Director on the Philips India board. He also spent several years with Hindustan Unilever in various sales, marketing and business head roles with his last assignment at the FMCG major being that of heading the Hair Care business.
This engineer who also holds a management degree is passionate about writing and teaching. His passion for teaching comes out during his lectures as a visiting faculty in various business schools across the country.
Talking more about Nokia’s association with IPL and how it has helped the brand, D Shivakumar, VP and Managing Director, Nokia Indiatalks to Purna Parmar from Audience Matters.com about why the company’s focus remains on innovation, for both, their products as well as marketing campaigns.
You have partnered with KKR for the third consecutive year, so what’s new in this year association?
This year we have started a new initiative called ‘Main Bhi Coach’ or ‘Be a coach’. We have done a lot of innovations with KKR in the past; this time too we endeavour to do the same. Cricket is a game where everyone has a view and everyone has something or the other to say. So we thought lets give people a chance to speak their mind. For every advice or SMS sent to Nokia the person would be rewarded with various KKR merchandise such as an SRK signed trophy, a ten song voucher, or for 100 runs you get a kit bag with a Nokia and KKR T-Shirt, for 200 runs a KKR trophy autographed by Shah Rukh and other KKR team players and then at 400 runs a lucky dip winner will get a chance to go for the Toss in Eden Gardens with the KKR team.
How has the response to this campaign been so far?
We have been extremely positive in our approach; I said this in our first year of association with KKR that Nokia is one of the biggest brands and we don’t need awareness. What we were doing was for the electricity on the brand, and that’s exactly what has been delivered. Mainly, because Shah Rukh Khan has that kind of a personality, he brings with him a whole be range of audience like women and children and excitement to the brand. Nokia’s awareness, thanks to cricket and the energy around it is ranked very high. Moreover, while the stadium audience during IPL matches has the typical male audience, it also manages to pull in women and children in great numbers. Hence we thought of associating with KKR.
Nokia’s association with cricket has been long how has the sport helped the brand?
I think it’s basically what we say as a brand, Nokia connects people to each other and to their passion. Cricket in India is a passion which a lot of Indians believe in and I think we have become a fabric of their life through our association with cricket.
Have you partnered with any other sport apart from cricket in India?
Cricket is our biggest passion, we have done a lot of work with cricket, and have also done a lot of work with music. We are also doing some on-air television spots for Hockey. We also sponsored the Shillong Football club and again it has proved to be a great sponsorship for us.
What are your views on sports as a promotional vehicle for a brand?
It’s just not sports. There has to be a strategic fit to anything you want to associate with. If the fit is good then you should do it. In this space for instance, we didn’t think it was a right for us to sponsor IPL , that wouldn’t have got us anything, but sponsoring KKR with Shah Rukh Khan has got us much more, so you need to find the right fit.
The mobile handset market in India has lately seen some serious competition recently, what are the challenges you face now and how do you plan to deal with them?
India has a subscriber base of about 500 million right now, it at least has another 300 to 400 million to go so that headroom still continues. I think the replacement market is another big opportunity so is the market for applications on mobile phones such as music and other applications. There are a lot of opportunities to be explored in this space yet.
Sports merchandise seems to be picking up lately, what do you think about this new wave?
I think as people align themselves with the various IPL teams like the KKR Nokia merchandise they would get familiar with it slowly. Sports merchandise still has to pick up in India. If you see internationally, football has picked up so well. I think it’s just a matter of time before we see the same wave in India.
How has the advent of advertising on mobile helped in revolutionising the face of advertising?
It has not started as yet; it is still in a very nascent stage in India. However, I think it will pick up really well, mainly because it is the largest available digital screen in the consumer’s hand, with 500 million screens, it is a big opportunity. We see it as a huge opportunity even as a brand, we also look forward to have some advertising on this platform.
Nokia has also been very aggressive on the recycling your mobile campaign. Do you plan to launch more such eco-friendly campaigns? Could you share the details?
Yes, I think being eco friendly is very good for business and we noticed that people in the age group of 25 to 35 years of age are very serious about this aspect. What is unique about Nokia’s initiative is that we take back any phone, any charger of any company and not just Nokia. So it’s not about a brand just doing it for itself, our initiative is for the industry and moreover when you talk about benefit to the society it needs to be an industry-wide benefit. We have also partnered with the NDTV Greenathon campaign; we are the first company which ran this programme and many other digital companies have picked this up after we ran it.
Apart from SRK, Priyanka Chopra is also a brand ambassador for Nokia. Do you plan to rope in more celebs for any of your future campaigns?
No, we have only SRK and Priyanka, apart from them we do a lot of work with AR Rehman in the music field.
Nokia is one of the market leaders. How do you plan to grow your share amidst intense competition?
The only way to grow the market share is to be relevant to the consumer and to be innovative.
What are your future plans?
Nokia is the market leader and we see competition as an opportunity, it is always good because it gears up the whole industry. If we have more and more competitors then market leaders need to get better and better, that’s a challenge and that’s what we should do.
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