Renewing one of the world’s biggest technology brands

Nokia’s brand is a powerful asset. It has high awareness all over the world and enviable associations with quality and integrity. But it is also a brand tied to mobile phones from a previous era. Since selling its devices business to Microsoft in 2014, the business has transformed beyond recognition. In fact, less than 1 percent of 100,000 employees in 2016 were “Nokians” two years previously.

Nokia approached Lippincott to help reestablish it as a brand that describes and shapes its business as a global technology power. It also needed help reestablishing itself as a brand that is a new leader in the technologies at the heart of our connected lives. So, our work included redefining the meaning of Nokia’s brand to support a new, largely B2B-focused business as well as supporting its continued growth into new technology markets.

We defined a new positioning for Nokia that tapped into the company’s DNA as a business focused on creating technology in the service of people. Along with Nokia’s leadership, we created a new vision: “To expand the human possibilities of the connected world.” Combined, they became a driving force for asserting Nokia’s purpose to global stakeholders.

Nokia’s new visual expression maintains the familiar logo that a billion people, until recently, carried in their pockets. Its B2B reinterpretation is effortless and intuitive, capturing the brand’s pervasive human focus while signaling its leadership and authority in networks and technology.

Nokia then spurred on its renewal through the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. This shifted Nokia from being the world’s specialist in mobile broadband to being a leading universal networks player with new software capabilities and Nokia Bell Labs, the research and innovation unit responsible for many of the major telecommunication breakthroughs of the past hundred years.

We worked with the business to support its acquisition strategy. This partnership included the planning of the rebranding process, guiding brand architecture decisions and defining Nokia’s overall narrative to help the business communicate the strategic shift of Nokia, from a challenger in mobile broadband to a technology leader, competing alongside a new set of global peers.

To ensure Nokia’s long-term success, we worked with the business to set up a brand governance structure and to establish a regular brand performance measurement system to track perceptions and preferences across business and consumer markets. We also supported Nokia’s brand team in setting up a family of brand guidelines, principles and governance processes to manage all expressions of Nokia across communications, products, events and brand licensing.

Together, our partnership has helped reestablish Nokia as a future-facing brand, ready to support a continuously evolving business.