Nokia's Pangea Day Spotlights Products
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, May 12, 2008
Earlier this year, the Nokia Mobile Filmmaker Award announced in March drew more than 600 independent short movie entries from around the world. A panel of judges picked five finalists. They attended the event in Los Angeles, which premiered the short movies. Eduardo Cachucho, who shot the winning mobile short film "The Game" in South Africa where he lives, won the Nokia Mobile Filmmaker Award. The prize: a mobile filmmaking trip to the Rwandan Gorilla Reserve with a full crew to capture the experience.
Offstage, Nokia entertained guests with several demonstrations. About a dozen computers had access to the Internet, allowing attendees to take pictures during the live event and upload them onto Ovi. "Sometimes the most interesting marketing happens when you don't control the consumer experience," says Afdhel Aziz, a senior marketing manager for sponsorships at Nokia.
The event was organized by Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED), a New York-based non-profit aimed at fostering and sharing ideas. In addition to the Los Angeles venue, the event was broadcast live from Cairo, Kigali, London, Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro and aired on several global networks and Internet television stations, subtitled in seven languages.
Those who share their mobile films or images at http://share.ovi.com/pangeaday can enter into a chance to win a Nokia N95 8GB every day through May 12. The phone holds about 16 hours of video. The next version, N96, holds 40 hours of footage and receives DVB-H live television signal.
"You can shoot a film, upload it, and premiere it to the world within three minutes," he said. "You'd likely sacrifice quality creating it in three minutes, but it's certainly a new approach. You don't have to wait 18 months development, 18 months for production, and three months post production."
Nokia also showcased one of three portable screening rooms it used in an experiential marketing campaign for Pangea Day and the Nokia N95 cellular phone. Dubbed "the world's smallest movie theater," the custom-built cubes equipped with five cushy theater seats and a screen first appeared on streets in Rio, London and New York, where local filmmakers recruited to produce a short movie based on a daily theme relied on passersby as actors and actresses. The independent artists were given the Nokia N95 mobile phone, which has both 5-megapixel still and high-quality digital video cameras.
Moviemakers produced more than 2,000 pieces of content, demonstrating the phone's capabilities to shoot movies and upload them to the Internet. The cinema booth allowed people to watch the movie minutes later on OVI, Nokia's Internet service, which includes an online destination for consumers to store content, Nokia's Music Store, N-gage games and Nokia Maps.
Online ads included banner advertising on film school and other Web sites where independent moviemakers hang out. Nokia also relied on search and viral video marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing supported by bloggers. Nokia also ran 30- to 60-second spots during the brief two-minute intermissions throughout the show.
The next sponsorship and marketing deal takes Nokia to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival (IAF) to connect with content producers to showcase Nokia's hardware, software and services for advertisers. The message to creators: Nokia can help you produce advertising campaigns and publish them to the Web all on one device. "I can help you make an ad on your phone and pump it out to millions of people," Aziz said.
