Nokia launches massive Ovi Maps campaign; evidence of services push

Having received the support of Nokia's management board at its shareholder meeting to focus on mobile services, the company has triggered a six-week integrated ad campaign to promote its Ovi Maps service.

The company said that the multi-million dollar marketing plan was easily its biggest campaign in 1H/2010 and the natural conclusion of a process that began in January when Nokia first announced that its Ovi Maps app would be available free.

The promotion will comprise 60 and 30 second TV and cinema slots, plus radio and digital slots. It will feature real people in different mobile scenarios and use the tagline: 'everyone everywhere can find their way'.

John Nichols, head of marketing and Go To Market at Nokia UK and Ireland, said that this promotion was what the company had been building towards. "Ovi Maps is very important to us, and we want to show how it's great not just for satnav but also for browsing categories and finding the nearest grocers, cash machine, post office and so on."

The marketing campaign comes weeks after Google launched its satnav for Google Maps on Android devices, but Nichols said he was not worried about the competition. "The timing right now is perfect. We now have the right scale to push the service. We are confident about our proposition."

Last week, Nokia launched a free service pack, Own Voice for Ovi Maps, which enables users to customise the voice-over for the satnav. The company claims that Ovi Maps has been downloaded 10 million times.

For more on this story:
Mobile Entertainment & NMA

Related stories:
Nokia's free Ovi Maps tops 1 million downloads in first week
Nokia: Forget handsets, services are the way forward
Ovi Store could be opened to other platforms, says Nokia
Nokia adds Own Voice personalization to Ovi Maps