I’m sat in Cliff’s presentation — focusing around the Nokia stores and the Nokia brand – fascinating.
He talked briefly about the new flagship stores in Russia, Chicago, New York — Rafe mentioned there’s a London one coming. Funnily enough the Nokia Lakeside Thurrock store wasn’t mentioned 
He talked about the experience, the brand experience, the brand equity. Clearly he knows his stuff — having moved mountains at Nike and Ikea prior to joining Nokia.
The Consumer Experience circle
- The Desire to Change
- Hunt for information
- Purchase experience point — the most crucial for Nokia. The person in the store has a huge influence on what actually happens. If that sales person has been told to sell more Motorolas then that’s a real problem for Nokia.
- Setting the handset up correctly — before they leave their store
- Daily experience — how it works, how it performs
- Services and features
- Discover new services and features
- Help experience — when you come back to the brand to learn/get assistance
- Communication with the brand
Cliff commented that retail can play a part in every single part of these points.
Retail is the true media — the most powerful you can deliver.
And flagship –> Consumers need to truly understand what the devices can do — but they also want an experience to match their aspirations. They want to be wowed in the store, they want to feel good.
Great product, service, presentation, experience == loyalty, which has to be earned.
Nokia needs to ‘delight at retail’, ‘give people the best possible experience.’
The results so far:
- 5 stores today, Mexico coming soon, London site in Regent Street signed and identified
‘Who the hell identified the dummy phone’ — fine when it was just a phone, but when it’s the kind of devices available nowadays, we must put live handsets into the store.
Nokia experience a 40% increase in sales across stores where their live products are demonstrated. Shocking.
He doesn’t like the idea of connecting the phones to flipping great padlocks. They’re working on a way to try and meet the security requirements (to prevent folk stealing the handsets) so that you can get a good experience handling and playing with the live handsets in store.
Nokia store team members are trained for 6 weeks — all the way through the Nokia brand and product back catalog.
‘Customer satisfaction filled with moments of delight’ is a target.
Best sellers in the Flagship stores — the top of the range ones. The N-Series in particular.
Nokia’s flagship stores sell 165% of the market average — willing to pay top price.
Fascinating.
