Close-Up: Live Issue - How Nokia is putting the mobile centre stage

London, Los Angeles and Shanghai respectively.

However, the three storylines are told, in their entirety, through text
messages, pictures, videos and voicemails from fictional friends, lovers
and family members.

At its heart, the campaign revolves around the concept that you learn
more about a person by looking through their phone than by talking to
them for an hour. The different elements are connected by the line: "My
phone knows everything about me. If you found my phone, would you look
through it?"

In total, Wieden & Kennedy has put together 3,750 pieces of scripted
content to tell their tales online - on Facebook and on
www.someoneelsesphone.com. And this number will rise, as viewers
interact with the characters online and via text messages.

The idea for the campaign came from the creative team of Fabian Berglund
and Ida Gronblom, who wanted to create something that "felt much closer
to the lives of young people" and tapped into the feeling of panic
people experience when they lose their mobile phone.

The series, Someone Else's Phone, was created to launch Nokia's
Supernova range of handsets, and kicked off with a 60-second TV spot
introducing the three characters on 15 October.

So far, the site has had more than three million hits in the first
fortnight of activity. And, not surprisingly, Anna, who is a model based
in London, Jade from Shanghai and Luca in LA already have hundreds of
friends each on Facebook.

Supporting the online campaign are weekly TV ads, which update the three
storylines, 32 press and poster ads, radio spots and 52 viral teasers to
draw more viewers to the main website.

Added to this, Wieden & Kennedy has created a microsite, which is
translated into ten languages, a dotMobi version of the website, banners
and widgets, and has built interactive partnerships with Facebook,
Yahoo! and Diesel. On the main site, each character has their own page,
which features the Nokia 7610 in the centre of the screen, surrounded by
text messages, voicemails and images, which you click on to listen or to
read.

As the campaign continues, the interaction between the characters and
users is set to become more active. This will involve live Q&As and
publishing of the characters' phone numbers, while the series finale
will see the characters meeting at a party in Paris, with users able to
enter a competition to win an invite.

The campaign will also end with the microsite being opened up to the
audience, who will be able to add and control their own content.

However, the issue of control is perhaps the campaign's main shortfall,
with Nokia looking to keep a tight hold of content until the final act.
"Clearly, they want people to comment and contribute, but you can't lose
too much control because it is still a branded message," Neil Christie,
the Wieden & Kennedy managing director, says.

"We were partly trying to launch and sell the handset. Partly to build
preference among younger consumers for Nokia, and to communicate to that
audience in the media they are accustomed to using."

Overall, it is certainly a bold idea with some very interesting uses of
media. However, as the commentators suggest (see box), being bold may
not be enough to engage a notoriously hard audience.

THE VERDICT

- Ella Fullagar, Web-savvy 15-year-old, avid MySpace and Bebo user

"The graphics at the beginning are really good; they are simple and
grabbed my attention. But when you are actually on the site, on people's
phones, you realise that you are going to have to spend quite a lot of
time on it. It was really boring as you had to repeatedly click through
the messages. Nobody is going to be bothered to click through
everything. I don't think it would appeal too much to my age group
because it is so time-consuming.

"It was a bit confusing and a little busy. After the graphics at the
beginning, the three people's phones pop up all at once. There's too
much for your eyes to take in.

"You'd only get interested in the characters if you spent loads of time
clicking through the texts. Really, teenagers are self-obsessed; they
don't care about anything other than themselves. Young people only care
about their circle of friends. When they gossip, it is normally about
people they know, who go to their school, or people who are well
known.

"The main focus wasn't the actual phone. I didn't think it told you
enough about the phone straight away or enough within the whole site:
you had to look at the features section.

"It's a bit of a taboo to say you have a Nokia phone. When you think of
Nokia, it's the first phone you ever got: it's chunky and has massive
buttons. Teenagers don't want sturdy things, they want phones they can
brag about that look good, like an iPhone or BlackBerry. They could have
tried to advertise it as a prettier, newer phone, but they didn't."

- Mans Tesch, Digital strategy director, Fallon

"Wieden & Kennedy and Nokia should get credit for this ambitious effort
to break new ground. That said, I have had a peek at the oh-so-happening
life of Anna, the aspiring model. Considering the fact that we're both
Swedish, quite recently moved to London, and we seem to spend our
summers on the same island in the Baltic Sea, we do have a few things in
common. Sadly, all I can think of when wading through the contents of
her phone is an overpowering urge to run, fast, to an all-day traffic
meeting. Yes, it is that tedious and uninspiring.

"An idea can be ever so innovative, from the perspective of how it uses
digital media to convey its message, but if the story isn't as engaging
as the next episode of Entourage, it's not going to work itself into the
conversations of the people it tries so hard to please. The constant
challenge for brands in this fragmented media landscape is to find ways
to be relevant and interesting within the very digital context that is
quickly becoming the primary space for communication and
entertainment.

"The same rules apply now as they have in advertising for more than 40
years. To engage people, the technology can be innovative, but if the
story is not fantastic, it is going to be flat.

"It is a pretty good use of the medium, but it could have been more
fragmented in the same way that the online world is. Online work gets
rewarded for encouraging people to explore and to discover for
themselves. But here it stops quite early in the process of
exploring."