• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, February 11, 2021

SMS in the smartphone world stands for “short message service,” and smartphones are pretty much the hardware of emoji jockeys.

Nokia Phones' Valentine’s Day idea departs from image-heavy messages with its campaign of “short moving stories” from well-known poets and authors that users can download and share in text messages. They’re on Nokia’s website and via Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Those messages are sweet and uplifting, led by the spoken-word artist George the Poet, best known for the poem he recited before the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle  in 2018

George opines on love, work, hope and family.  So do others in what Nokia is calling its Global Panel of Positivity, including James McInerney, known for spreading positive messages throughout London’s Underground system; Indian author Ruskin Bond, who writes children's books; George Kagwe, a Kenyan comedian and content creator; Alina Balashova, a Russian writer and snowboard/outdoor enthusiast; and Juan Pablo Gaviria, a Bogota author and influencer who calls himself a “Happiness Manager.”

It’s the Finnish electronics company’s effort to spread some good vibes.

“If the last year has shown us anything, it’s the importance of positivity,” explained Nokia’s Stephen Taylor, the chief marketing officer. “Following nearly a year of isolation and vulnerability one thing that stood out to us is the power of people’s collective voices to spread positivity in a time of need, which is also at the core of our business and ties back to our Finnish roots. Finland has consecutively won the title of being the happiest country in the world.”

The campaign is also a chance for Nokia to reassert itself as a player in the cell phone business. Once it was a high flyer, but it fell to the wayside when smartphones from Apple and Samsung gained overwhelming dominance.

Nokia says this campaign is a part of a wider ongoing initiative to recognize Nokia phones as “trusted, secure and built to last.” Counterpoint Research, which watches the tech industry, recently ranked Nokia “#1 for "software updates and security.” But the phones are generally light on bells and whistles.

Several reviews on smartphone review websites are often complimentary, but with qualifications.  The new Nokia 8.3 5G, the website TrustedReviews wrote, is “a competent mid-range phone that gets pretty much all the basics right. The only downside is that it targets a very busy space in the market full of handsets with more developed feature sets, like the Pixel 5 and Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro.”