Nokia has been ranked No1 in the Brand Equity Most trusted brands of the year 2009. Nothing alarming, given the immense popularity that it enjoys among people. But what’s surprising and heart warming is this has happened in less than one year of its battery recall fiasco in India.
On 13th August 2008, Nokia issued a product advisory (not a recall) on its BL-5C battery. It stated that the battery could potentially experience “overheating initiated by a short circuit while charging, causing the battery to dislodge”.
Fuelled by the media, panic gripped the nation. I remember, the Hindi News Channels – Aaj Tak and Star News were competing with each other to show people ‘affected’ by this. The reporters fanned out across India especially in the hinterland and ‘broke’ the news of people flocking to Nokia Store centre to get their battery checked.
What will the company do in such a situation? How will it react to the media bombardment?
Nokia was geared up and armed to its teeth. The web and toll free number were used effectively to inform and interact with the customers. An interesting point was the use of the toll free number. Among the phones affected by the battery included the low range and immensely popular 1100, 1108, 1110, 1112, etc right up to the N series (N70, N72, etc)
Given the fact that they broke new ground with the low end phones, most of the customers were not the net savvy crowd. It ensured that the call centers were beefed up and could handle any number of calls in all the possible languages.
Nokia Care and Nokia Priority dealers were told to handle customers with utmost care. Most of them were open till late night and were only doing this job.
What’s interesting to note and something that needs to be applauded is the fact that Nokia did not come out with a corporate campaign (with their CEO as brand ambassador) to talk to the customers (nation in our case!). This reminds of the classic case where in after the pesticide controversy, Pepsi and Coke came with their own versions to assure the people that their products are safe. Cadbury’s went one step further and roped in Amitabh Bachchan to do the talking in their corporate ad after the worm controversy!
Nokia believed in connecting with people on ground. It strongly believed in rolling up their sleeves and taking the issue head on and on ground. And the result paid off. And it’s there for everyone to see. Indeed the public memory is short and they do give you a second chance to prove your worth.
One of the very rare and I really mean a very rare case of a brand truly believing and living its brand promise of Connecting People
other thing I find interesting - Top 10 Indian brands are more of FMCG brands, which needs lot of advertising push; But top 10 global brands are more of Tech companies(6 out of 10) wich build brands with little advertising push
ReplyDelete....you know in the talk given by NOKIA's D. Shivkumar last year at ISB , he talked about the battery incident and one of the things he stressed on was the media relations(mainly the big barons like TOI, HT etc.) he personally had at the time because of which they did not slice open NOKIA as much as they could have.
ReplyDeleteGoes to show how important the role of any leader is in the time of a crisis !!!
Great write up as usual Amit !! :)
Amit, good one.. as this was not too much in the media. i couldnt recollect this example.
ReplyDeleteWith all due respect to other views which are certainly not without merit, I have just one point to make - Nokia is a major advertiser and therefore the media was more kind to it.
ReplyDelete