Results and Effectiveness

1. 7.8 million Blackberry searches happened during the period and 51% of them had Nokia advertisement served to them. 2. Of the qualified searchers 16,000 were redirected to the Nokia landing page. At a CTR of 3.95% which is 300% higher than the industry benchmark. 3. Without any media investment in offline media, we took advantage of Blackberry’s offline campaign to increase Nokia search queries on E series by 30 %. 4. Nokia recaptured the mind space within the business phone category by adopting guerilla tactics to counter BlackBerry’s huge spend on TV & Print. Source:*Google India RO/PO research 2008

Creative Execution

Analysis of historical data of Blackberry advertising revealed a significant positive correlation between its offline advertising campaigns and search volumes. However, Blackberry’s absence from paid search meant that they could not take advantage of these qualified search queries and direct these focused consumers to a Blackberry relevant destination. Nokia identified this gap to convert Blackberry searchers to a relevant Nokia offering. Blackberry is a registered trademark. Nokia exploited the recent change in the Google search policy that now allowed advertisers to buy keywords including trademarks. Nokia bought all Blackberry relevant keywords including the keyword “Blackberry”. As a result, whenever the consumer searched for Blackberry the Nokia paid link was displayed directing the consumer to the Nokia website where he found the same Blackberry offering from a Nokia product-Qwerty keyboard, e-mail and social networking solutions. Nokia was able to convert a hot Blackberry prospect to a Nokia phone buyer.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

The growing acceptance of e-mail on the go and social networking gave a huge fillip to the business phones category in the last one year. The advent of multiple players across price points offering the same solutions threatened Nokia’s monopoly. Blackberry was leading the attack. It was imperative for Nokia to regain share & establish itself as the best provider of social networking and e-mail services. Nokia decided to take advantage of Blackberry’s weaknesses in the digital space to counter the offense. In India, 90% of mobile phone buyers go to Google search to procure information before the purchase*. The queries range from functional queries like product features, pricing and brand comparison to more evolved references like reviews about the different handsets available in the market. The consumer already has a well formed consideration set when he walks into a dealership to buy a mobile phone.