Cliff Crosbie, Dir. Retail Marketing, Nokia

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.