Nokia has been left with egg on their face after a publicity stunt in London backfired for the struggling Finnish company, who are losing senior executives faster than they are building marketshare.
Last night Nokia tried to ambush an HTC event in London claiming that because HTC had sent bus loads of journalists along to their own Nokia World, which was held the day prior, they needed to retaliate.
As part of their stunt Nokia turned up outside the HTC event with a lunch box (“HTC press conference survival kit”) containing a HTC sandwich (“ham, tomato and cheese – not the most exciting sandwich”), an energy bar (“in case you need a boost”), a giant foam Nokia finger (“to use during the Q&A”), a pen and a pad (“for doodling”) and ear plugs and an eye mask (“in case you feel snoozy”).
Fairfax Media, who attended both events, said that Nokia also ambushed HTC’s event venue by sending an army of shills to stand outside holding red Nokia balloons which said “I know where i’m going with Nokia’s Ovi Maps”.
The only problem with their stunt is that Nokia PR executives, prior to the HTC event in London, contacted journalists who had been flown in as guests of HTC and asked them to attend the Nokia event in London.
Tracy Postill, a senior Nokia PR Executive told ChannelNews prior to the stunt being revealed, that her company had obtained a list of journalists attending the HTC event in London and had approached journalists with an invitation for them to attend the Nokia event in London.
“We were given a list of journalists by David Flynn, a journalist we had invited to the Nokia World event. We then approached these journalists to attend our event. We thought it made sense as they were in London at the same time”.
I was originally invited to attend the HTC event but declined.
In another stupid move, Nokia waited till 7.00pm on Thursday evening to invite Australian journalists to participate in a Live webcast of their Nokia World event in London, which was starting at 7.30pm local EST.
The only problem was that most journalists had gone home or were attending an LG Android Smartphone event in Sydney.
When Postill was asked why Nokia had not invited journalists earlier in the day to participate in the Nokia World event she said: “Our Finnish communications team would not let us put out an email in advance”.
Fairfax Media said that bloggers and Twitter commentators called Nokia’s tactics “dirty”, prompting the company to respond on its official Twitter page: “HTC drives buses up to our front door to hijack #nokiaworld – so we give out red balloons plus lunch…and u call us “dirty”!? LOL!”
