Check out Nokia Mobile’s three new #48HoursOfChange videos

Nokia Mobile published another set of promotional videos with the purpose of showing that Nokia phones are great for story telling since the battery lasts for 48 hours and phones perform well.

The last time I reviewed Nokia Mobile’s previous #48HoursOfChange video, I expected that most readers would come after me in the comments, and the whole Nokiamob team. Thankfully, and unfortunately for Nokia Mobile, I found out that we all share the same sentiments regarding this new Nokia ad campaign.

The first video in the series isn’t something I would call great, not even good. It was a bad start. Although I really appreciate Ibidunni Damilola’s personality and his efforts in this rather fainéant campaign. At the same time, it is hard to miss the talks about the lackadaisical storytelling, and the lackluster video quality — the latter being a hopeless case. Ironically, the whole video is about taking better photos and video content using smartphones.

Let’s check the three new videos.

The Storyline

In the first video, we follow Liese Kuhn as she shops for food in her local farmer store. This video is all about supporting local farmers, and sustainable shopping. I really like this idea because we also own a farm back in my hometown.

The next video is very inspiring. We follow Buhle Sithela as he shows us how he helps provide accessible entertainment to children in his area. This is one of the most successful of the stories so far. It shows us how to make a change, and the result of these changes. Also, the story itself outweighs all of the flaws I see in the video.

The last video from Cape Town, South Africa features professional skateboarder Jean-marc Johannes. Jean-marc Johannes tells us his story of how he was able to challenge himself to showcase his skateboarding talent in Cape Town.

Liese Kuhn

This is one of my favorites from the #48HoursOfChange campaign. Right off that bat, we see that the video quality of this ad is a great improvement over the first one in the series. Not spectacular, but overall above decent — especially the quality from the front-facing camera.

There is no mention of what Nokia smartphone was used to shoot this video, neither a disclaimer in the description saying it was taken with one. But since we see Liese Kuhn using the Nokia 8.3 5G, let’s assume it was taken with it.

The dynamic range from the front-facing camera is quite limited (we can see the clouds being overexposed) but the exposure on Liese’s face is actually on point. It also doesn’t change whenever she moves. The details are pretty awesome, as well as the skin tone. It is not the cleanest 1080p video we’ve seen, but it’s way better.

Most parts of the ad was taken using the main camera. There are times when the phone takes a scene with good dynamic range, but most of the time, we see the phone favoring the shadows over the highlights. It is a great compensation method, but it also shows how limited the range sensor can get if exposed in an extreme scenario. Needless to say, despite favoring the shadows, the camera still gets a lot of noise in the darker part of the image. The details are also not very good, but decent enough.

Overall, the video quality is good (they need to improve the bitrate), but inconsistent. There are times when it shows over-sharpened images, and there are also times when it can be very soft. Thumbs down for the dynamic range, and the shakiness. The front-facing camera, however, is great.

Buhle Sithela

Technicalities-wise, I would say, this video is good enough. The story, however, is great!

Changes don’t happen within 48 hours. To actually create a change, make it a long-term plan. You can’t just go out there and tell people what to do, and expect them to follow you after the fact. You need to initiate the change yourself, and make it long-term.

In this video, we see how Buhle Sithela himself is doing the changes by providing accessible entertainment to children in his area. He also expressed his interests in doing so beyond this ad campaign. In fact, he has been doing projects to help his community for a long time.

Technicalities-wise, there are times when the video shows a great amount of details, and natural looking sharpness (refer to video time-stamp 0:25 to 0:37). However, there are also times when the phone overdoes the sharpening like we see on 0:10. Then there’s an issue with dynamic range, and the webcam-like quality of the front-facing camera. It is also very shaky, and the color leans over magenta.

Thankfully, the good story outweighs all of these flaws.

Jean-marc Johannes

The last video is about Jean-marc Johannes, a Guinness-bearing professional skateboarder from South Africa. His video is not about making a change within 48 hours, but capturing the result of the change he initiated in Cape Town years ago.

Just so you know, Jean-marc Johannes was born in Athlone, Cape Town, South Africa, a place where there were no skate-parks. If it wasn’t for him, and his fellow skateboarders, people will not be able to recognize skateboarding in South Africa. Right now, if you Google Search skate-parks in Athlone, you will see a lot of results. This wasn’t the case years before.

Aside from the good story, I love that they were able to show good results from these cameras. It has a more stable video. The dynamic range is good, pleasant colors. Although I’m not a fan of the contrast which crushed some of the shadows. The sharpening can be overwhelming, but not to the point that it’s annoying. Of all the videos so far, I think this is the best.

Again, no mention what Nokia phone was used to shoot this ad. Although I saw Jean-marc Johannes posted a photo with Nokia 8.3 5G on his Twitter account.

Nokia 8.3 5G ✨@NokiaMobile #Nokia8Dot35G pic.twitter.com/SWSIVZTkC9

— Jean-marc Johannes (@jeanmarcskate) March 7, 2021

 

Moving forward

It’s good that we see Nokia Mobile doing brand campaigns again. This may not be the most polished campaign from the Nokia brand ever, but we hope the company is going to actually put an effort on their devices first. It is easier to create a campaign if the products are great.

Let’s take for example, the “More than your eyes can see” campaign for the Lumia 925. It is a campaign which solely relies on what the phone is capable of doing, and it successfully showcased it. If the phone is already great, you just have to show how great it is.

To be fair, there’s a long list of good Nokia products manufactured by HMD Global which deserves praises. But for once, the company should listen to the consumers. All they have to do is put an effort on R&D, and improve the overall quality of the products — inside and out, before wasting money on campaign which shows nothing.

Yes, ODM is cost-effective, and easier to make, but what makes the products it produced different from other smartphones aside from the Nokia branding? If you remove all the logos, it will just be another smartphone manufactured from Shenzen, China. Whereas, if you remove the logo on the Nokia Lumia 920, even the ZEISS logo on the camera plate, you can still recognize that it is a Nokia Lumia smartphone!

Nokia Lumia failed to takeover the world, but it is mainly because of the operating system it was using. Nokia Mobile has the chance to break into the market. It has the world’s most popular smartphone operating system, and the Nokia brand. We also heard about the investment from Nokia Corporation, Google, and Qualcomm. So what’s holding them back?

Perhaps, Nokia Mobile has something great in store for us this year, and the years to come. Something great that it is so worthy of any lavish Nokia campaigns.

Since we learned that Nokia Corporation actually owned about 10 percent of HMD Global, there is a good chance that the Finnish startup will be seeing a brighter future. I mean, look at the Nokia smart TVs? They are initially exclusive to India, but the product is expanding to some markets in the Europe. This means, there is still a demand for Nokia products. It just needs to be great. ??