It is no secret that Nokia has spent tons of money on promoting its Windows Phone devices worldwide. Closer home, we have seen concerts being held all over India, Lumia branded vehicles roaming the streets of our cities and TV and print media being splattered with ads. The latest one might, however, be the most audacious (in a good way!) publicity campaigns ever tried by Nokia in India.
So, what did they do now? Well, they have actually painted an entire plane with the Nokia Lumia branding. A Jet Airways Boeing 737-800 bore the brunt of Nokia’s publicity blitzkrieg and has been transformed in to a giant Nokia branded flying machine. Jokes apart, I think the idea was exceptionally good (or extravagant rather) – at the same time, it left me wondering if at all this would have any impact on the actual sales of its Lumia branded Windows Phones. I hope it does.
Yours truly was amongst the lucky few who were invited for the media unveiling of the plane at Mumbai yesterday. That said, we were already aware about Nokia’s plans to release this plane thanks to a bunch of leaked pictures that were doing the rounds of the interweb weeks before the official unveiling of the plane.
Anyway, as it turned out, the plane was already in service with the Nokia Lumia branding starting January 1 and it would continue to fly around India as a normal flight all across its predetermined circuits. The campaign ends by the end of January. 31st January to be precise. Jet Airways, which allowed Nokia to use their planes as a flying banner seems to be quite happy to lend their planes for such usage to other brands as well in the future. Nice way to earn additional revenue, I say.
As for the plane, what was appealing to see was that the branding has been done on the insides of the plane too. While it is not an “in the face” kind of branding, almost every corner of the plane had been covered with a Nokia Lumia sticker – but they did not overdo it, I should add.
Nokia has also informed us about a contest they have been running on Facebook. All the user need to do is to spot a Nokia Lumia, take a picture of it and post it on the following Facebook page. 50 winners would be chosen and would be given a 2 hour joyride on this same plane on the 20th of January.
Nokia has been on the overdrive with its Lumia 800 promotion over the course of the last few months. One thing I did notice that the focus seems to be on the high end Lumia 800. Even the plane was painted with a picture of one – leaving the lower priced Lumia 710 which is a decent phone as well eclipsed by its better endowed brother.
Is it just me who thinks that Nokia should be focusing on the Lumia 710 too? Anyway you folks might want to read our first impressions of the Lumia 800 here.
