Compact, Vibrant, and Lots of Funny: Why Nokia's Self-Review is Good, Bad and Ugly
There is such a thing as drinking the Kool-Aid, but this time did Nokia go too far? On Monday the tech community went wild after news circulated of a Nokia Lumia 620 review posted on the Nokia Conversations blog by Adam Fraser—a NOKIA EMPLOYEE! (Talk about a biased opinion).
So with the stir it’s caused, it only seemed appropriate to pick the review apart in a “review of the review.”
The Good:
- The self review (and the buzz it caused) was a major SEO play for a company with a stale reputation (and I actually read the review)
The Bad:
- The review I read was kitschy and poorly written. A major oversight on Nokia’s part.
- There’s also no way to get around the fact that Adam is a paid employee. That’s like an employee at Kraft saying that Kraft Singles make the best grilled cheese (it just isn’t so). There simply should have been more transparency up front—using the blog as a forum to discuss why Nokia created the phone and diving deeper into the product specs.
The Ugly:
- The part about being in a dark alley—“Right now, I’m loving the Cinemagraph app. Here's my first attempt, down a dark alley.” That’s just creepy—I needn’t say more.
The takeaway here is that if a major brand (or any for that matter) is going to push a new product/announcement in a public forum, it should at least be transparent about why the news is important—what is it? (just the facts), why did the company decide to launch this product/service now? And what sets this launch apart from others? If you can’t answer those questions then hold off from a launch until you can. 