Nokia Goes Where No Mobile Has Gone Before
Nokia’s new Star Trek Website is breathlessly good marketing. There are goodies to be had for people tough enough to complete the Romulans’ task. The pointy-eared ones—and tattooed in the new Star Trek movie—want to know about “technologically advanced devices” from Nokia.
There’s nothing quite like movie-marketing tie-ins. But some are better than others. Nokia has done good, but not great. From the site:
When you have proved yourself worthy, you shall be rewarded. Fail and you shall face the wrath of the Romulans. Your mission is to identify the two devices that together have the following features: Maps, Screen larger than 3″, QWERTY, Five-way directional controller, Bluetooth and FM radio.
The tasker must choose from a series of different Nokia phones, including the E63, E75, E96 and 9600i. The combination of two phones must meet the six criteria. It’s not rocket science, but what a crappy reward: QuickTime clip of Kirk meeting Bones. It is a download, at least.
The site showcases some of Nokia’s best handsets: The forthcoming N97, the N96 (which I own), the N79 (which my daughter owns but has sidelined for the E71) and the 5800 XpressMusic (which I am testing). There are wallpapers to download for the PC and goodies for the mobile. The Nokia Trekkie can choose one of the featured phones to be part of the wallpaper.
There are two ways to get to the mobile site: Barcode scanning or typing the URL on the handset. The barcode is for the techie Trekkies, who must download NeoReader, install the application and point the phone’s camera at the barcode displayed at the main Website.
The mobile site offers up two ringtones, animated wallpaper, Star Trek movie scene clips and more. Presentation is excellent, and there is marketing collateral for the aforementioned N-Series handsets.
For Nokia and Star Trek fans, either of the Websites is a no-brainer. But there is still something missing here. New media and new marketing should be social. Nokia’s approach is more Web 1.0, meaning portal, than Web 2.0. The social Web is missing, which undermines an otherwise good marketing effort.
Here’s what Nokia also should do—and still can (Star Trek is the summer’s hot ticket; right now anyway):
- The PC and mobile Websites should connect to Facebook and there some Nokia/Star Trek fan group(s). Why not other social communities, too?
- The task should be more difficult—and fun! Better: There should be a free N-Gage Star Trek game for those people completing the more arduous task.
- Give away Nokia N-Series handset(s). There are so many ways to do this. For example, send people on treasure hunts, where in a Flash- or Silverlight-animated game they must identiy artifacts from the movie.
Nokia could make the Star Trek marketing site engaging—or better—N-Gaging. Now excuse me while I go play with the tricorder application downloaded from Nokia’s mobile Star Trek site.
Do you have a marketing story that you’d like told? Please email Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail dot com.
[Via Nokia Users]
