The Campaign

Can a brand’s relaunch be powered just by evoking feelings of nostalgia? Maybe, not. But amongst the key highlights of the comeback of the Nokia 3310, we identified the return of the Snake game to be a game-changer. This favourite mobile game of 90s kids was known for its signature perpendicular movement. Since we planned to hit the sweet spot with nostalgia and tug right at the heart strings of the audience, the idea was to keep the aesthetics of the original Snake game intact in our campaign and execution. We released three online films, each of them showcasing a snake pattern that the audience had to recreate. Tactically, all the films did was to call on people to submit their entries on social to stand a chance to win but emotionally it brought Brand Nokia back on to the center-stage of mobile phone category conversations.

Creative Execution

Three live-action films were released featuring the groups that are culturally relevant to India – A brass band and a football team from Mumbai. The purpose of making these films was to release the patterns for the challenge. The films not only showcased the patterns but also doubled up as a quick and fun tutorial on how to #MakeSnake. Once the films did their job of piquing interest, we tied up with our first set of influencers to get their own versions of #MakeSnake out onto social. Even before we knew, we were riding the viral wave and peak virality was achieved when competitive brands like Micromax (India’s 3rd largest phone manufacturer) started participating with their own #MakeSnake patterns. It was all in good humour and who are we to complain about the share of voice that was being generated for brand Nokia in return?

The real highlight of the campaign was the resurrection of UGC. With the entries that flurried in, it was evident that people had surpassed the average time taken to participate in a challenge online. The internet witnessed thousands of creative snakes created by the audience, brands, publishers and even competitors and the reach that this campaign garnered turned out to be 19 million. A total of 1500 final entries went into consideration after which 3 winners were chosen. Nokia’s fan page increased by 25,000 people during the 6 days of the event. Well, did we also tell you that the new Nokia 3310 went out of stock right after launch day?

Every so often we see participative internet challenges making it to the top of internet trends amongst millennials. We decided to marry this trend to the brand world through the Snake game. #MakeSnake’s launch was positioned as a new internet challenge and to kick-start it we engaged the audience with a robust influencer strategy. The snake pattern challenges released were strategically devised – not too difficult for the audience to give up on it and not too easy, so that the audience makes the effort to give their best. The right online stars taking the challenge was key to the campaign’s success - success which could quantifiably only be measured by UGC participation but qualitatively it brought Nokia back into mobile phone conversations.