HMD: #Nokia smartphones now in focus. To support the launch with field marketing

In an exclusive interview for MobileToday, Sarah Edge, HMD’s General Manager for the UK, gave details about HMD’s plans for a strong marketing push for the new Nokia devices in the UK. The most interesting statements can be found down below. For the full interviw, visit Mobile Today’s official website.

In an interview with Mobile Magazine, when asked about the brand’s retail training ambitions, Edge answered, ‘Yes, we’re currently looking at who we use for our field marketing but we feel it’s really key for Nokia. We’ve got some candidates, a few different options to decide between. We have to get people trained and get brand advocates in store, to make lives easier when staff are selling. We’d love to explore something a bit different with field marketing, different ways to create advocacy outside of a giant field teams.’

With the 3310 grabbing the headlines at the event, Mobile asked whether HMD got the balance right between focusing on the feature phone and on the smartphones. Edge responded, ‘All our marketing approach from here on in will be focused on the smartphones. We think we’ve got enough interest in the smartphones; people are buying into the designs, the quality and the price point. We’ll give rivals run for their money.

Despite being under a year old as a company, HMD has secured access to many of the strongest retail channels in the UK, describing this, Edge told Mobile, ‘We are now working with Exertis in the UK to supply all our retail partners. We’ve went out and met them all now and any we’ve missed we will be seeing in the next few weeks. They are really excited, they’ve had so much success with Nokia in the past. The doors are open, now we just have to deliver on it at launch.

‘We’ve been really lucky, you can’t under estimate the power of the brand, not just with consumers but our retail partners as well. They want us to be successful. They want more variety, more competition in the market.’

I’m glad to hear that smartphones are the focus, because the 3310 took a lot of attention from everyone on the market, not only the new Nokia devices. Edge said that HMD has strong retail partners, and are planing a field marketing push for the launch of Nokia 3, 5 and 6 in the UK. The phones are expected to hit the market in Q2 this year.