The Problem With Nokia's Marketing Strategy

Nokia had cut 12 percent of its work force to trim operating costs by $1.47 billion.Meanwhile,competitors like ericcson and apple are climbing in terms of sales and profit.One of the major contributor to this chaos is failed marketing

Just hired their first CMO in 146 years 

While Nokia has been in business since 1865 and making portable phones since 1984, the Company hired its first Chief Marketing Officer, Jerri DeVard, on January 1^st of this year. Surprisingly, Jerri's background is primarily with consumer brands. Why is that a problem? Consumer brand marketers have had less than a stellar record after they joined high-tech companies. John Sculley (from Pepsi to Apple 1983-1993) and Cammie Dunnaway (fromFrito-Lay to Yahoo! 2003-2007 and Nintendo 2007-2010) come first to mind. Nokia's hope is that Jerri's past position with Verizon Communications and her familiarity with U.S. wireless carriers will help Nokia to re-establish meaningful distribution in the U.S., where it has little if any presence in the smartphone market. With Verizon's recent acquisition of the iPhone and continuing sales of Android-platform phones, Nokia is going to have to do a lot more than hire a former Verizon marketer and partner with Microsoft to get U.S. cell carriers to focus on its smartphone products.

Brand immaturity - using numbers instead of names 
Nokia failed to establish and name their product other than by using numbers.This reveal their brand immaturity. For example, Nokia's flagship smart phone model is called N8.The reason fo this is because it is hard to create name that had not already taken,as told by its executive.

Not listening to the marketplace 
Good marketers have a marketing information system to monitor, analyze, report and take action on what is going in their marketplace. Research in Motion introduced the Blackberry in 1999. It was so popular with users that some jokingly called it the "Crackberry." Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007. Its popularity skyrocketed. Don't you think someone in Nokia's marketing department would have taken notice and been more proactive about developing a competitive product?

Product-driven rather than market-driven 
Nokia is to focusing on its product rather than focusing on the market.Also they are not hiring people with sufficient marketing expertise to properly brand and communicate the benefits of their product,