Lumia ad campaign. Fun or flaw?

I was a Nokia fans, and still like Nokia until today. As a regular reader of mynokiablog.com, I have been bombarded by everything about Nokia Lumia series Windows Phone. I don't think I have to repeat how important Lumia series is to Nokia the moment Stephen Elops decided to jump into the icy ocean of Windows Phone and leaving Symbian altogether.



Stephen Elops is an American. America is all about media, advertisement, it's a place where everyone is brainwashed by media from big corporate. Apple has been doing this since decades ago and they proved that it is a pretty effective method of selling their devices. Nokia is going to take this path in his way of propel Windows Phone into one of the major OS in the world. The bombarded the public with different form of advertisement like never before.

One of the most seen type of ad for Nokia Lumia 800


Whether it is on a taxi, an aircraft or a billboard, the whole Nokia Lumia series ad revolved around the idea of having squares in many colours. It is designed to associate with Windows Phone's tile. When I first saw those printed media version of the ad I find it looks pretty simple and attractive. It is straight forward and anyone can get the association really quickly.

Lumia 800 ad on a Jet Airways Boeing 737


It is until I saw this Jet Airways 737 news from mynokiablog then I realized the whole concept of the ad campaign started to altered. On first glance this Lumia 800 ad simply looks like other Lumia 800 ad but on a second look it is really different. See those colourful squares on each of the window? They looks like one of the ad for some Lego knock-off brick toy. Seriously.

While the Asha series are aimed for the low end phone, the Lumia series is targeting at the mid-high end phone. These colourful and childish looking bricks doesn't match the image of high end at all. While they always use the term 'simple', 'easy' and 'fun' for the Lumia 800, it doesn't mean that it has to be marketed like a cheap phone.

Since they want to target those active and young demographic, they need to make the ad looks youthful and dynamic. Windows Phone tiles are square, and it opposed the idea of dynamism. One of their graphic designer came out with a solution by using space and angle, it came out pretty good.

A good example of Lumia 800 ad on the idea of dynamism.


However, not all of those ad turned out as good as this one. Some of those designers have no idea of the tech industry and simply make an ad that looks like those early Lumia ad. They looks like crap and completely lost the initial association those square tiles had.

I'm not sure if this is an official ad from Nokia or a spoof from mynokiablog


I'm not sure if the one above is official, if it is, then it will be the crappiest Lumia ad ever. What does those parallelograms make you think of? Lumia? Nope, it looks more like the logo of Blackberry.

Why? Why are there random parallelograms there?


Back to the Lumia aircraft. Why are there random parallelogram mixing together with those Windows Phone tiles? I can't recall any parallelograms tile on any Windows Phone. The designers who designed this must have no idea of the concept behind the Lumia initial ad. What they have done is simply take the concept of those initial ad and stick them down there. Horrible.

If Nokia put all of his egg on Windows Phone 7 bucket why don't they approach a more professional advertising firm instead of this fragmented and inconsistent advertising firm? One of the key success in creating brand image is though a consistent and unify ad campaign. Apple has pulled that off pretty well with a really consistent product name and ad campaign. Nokia, time to fire your PR department.