Do Old Brands have a Second Life?

When Nokia unveiled the 3310 at the Sunday event before the Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, the first thought that came to my mind was whether old iconic brands have a second life? In India we seemed encouraged by the Peugeot acquisition of the brand Ambassador for INR 800 million but it still needs to be seen if that brand has in fact a second life. The Nokia brand has unfortunately had a troubled ownership history in the recent past. Microsoft sold its feature phone assets to a subsidiary of Taiwanese firm Foxconn Technology and newly-established firm HMD Global for $350 million last year. The Nokia.com/phones website is operated by HMD Global Oy, the exclusive licensee of the Nokia brand for phones and tablets. 

Stop to ponder, which brands that we thought were dead, have been revived without too much success? Certainly the Volkswagen Beetle comes to mind. The Beetle was not just an icon, it was a cult brand. It unified people. There was an immediate feeling of affinity when two people who drove a Beetle met. Almost like the affinity that Apple users feel for each other and refer to themselves as 'fan boys'.

I did take a ride in the relaunched Beetle, but besides a modern shape, the car had none of the ingredients that made it a cult brand. Now powered by a 2 litre engine that seemed as powerful as the one in the Passat it still made people on the road stop and look at you but it never really caught on and I wouldn't call it a success. Whereas the old Beetle clubs still go on where the staunch Beetle fans scrounge the used market for spares for painstakingly restoring their cars.

Maybe Old Spice never did die, but it is no longer associated with “old” or “colonial” men, thanks to successful rebranding attempts. The product — which debuted in 1937 as Early American Old Spice for women and then in 1938 as Old Spice for men seemed to be ready to fade away about ten years ago. But it wasn’t until Old Spice launched its “Swagger” Campaign in 2008 that it started attracting the younger demographic it needed to compete with other brands.

So does the Nokia 3310 have a second life?

Well at first glance it would seem so. After all in countries like India the feature phone market is still about 80%. If we look at Mobile handset shipments for 2016, they touched 265 million with feature phones making up about 59 per cent of the overall market. And a phone with a battery that last 30 days on standby looks like the thing to take with you on your adventure, just like your Swiss knife. And a few years ago, in Africa the smart phone market actually declined. A Pew study conducted a few years ago found that most people in sub-Saharan Africa used their phones for text messaging and taking photos or videos – functions that a feature phone can handle just fine. Feature phones also work well with popular services like M-Pesa, which allows people to transfer cash via their phones; and mPedigree, where you can check to see if medicine you have bought is authentic or counterfeit.

Which means that there are many people around the world, who still want a phone and not a camera or a computer. And the Nokia was an unbelievably good phone, except that people stopped really using their phones like phones and started using them like computers to do other things ; watch video, navigate, shoot, and zillions of other things.

If the Nokia 3310 is available like any other household necessity in your local super market or general store, perhaps it will sell more than if it were distributed only through mobile stores. It could just be thing you put in your shopping basket as an impulse even if you are a smart phone user. After all everyone wants something that is cheap and fairly indestructible and that will survive an apocalypse if required. And at € 49 or INR 3500 the Nokia might just meet that need.

And if it succeeds it will certainly prove that old brands do have a second life.

Connect with me on twitter