The ringtone killed the Nokia star

From mega pixels to terabytes, camera phones to touch screen elevators, unmanned swipe machines at toll plazas to hybrid brinjals – Living with technology is now faster, easier and more convenient. Until recently, Apple and blackberry were only names of edible fruits to every household, but now they have become symbols synonymous with the latest electronic gadgets. Even though a ‘bite’ is still a toasted cheese sandwich or a vada pav for most of us, some would refer to it as the binary digit - the smallest increment of data on a computer a ‘byte’! Then there is the latest line of mini computers called Tablets. Im only glad tablets still refer to what doctors prescribe when you get a bad stomach and leak from the behind. And with the advent of traffic, travel, busy work schedules, sales targets with deadlines, life between math classes & post exam stress, presentations and meetings, and Reality Television, we have lost much control of our lives and everything comes to us in the form of choices. Pick anything you can think of doing, wearing eating or singing and they alll come with a predefined set of choices. Want to shop? there are malls, showrooms, road side vendors and sub choices in each of them respectively. Want to go for a movie? There's the mall, theater, or a download from some torrent. And want to buy a phone..? there's BB, Samsung, HTC... and that old brand that everyone loved "Nokia"

As we all know, sound is a key element of brand communication and one of the most important tools of multi-sensory branding, because it is only through video and audio that companies broadcast or deliver specific messages to large audiences. So If you think of any brand, you will notice that there are certain sounds associated with it. Intel is probably the best example, and so is Windows (the start up music). And there's our old friend Nokia - the now infamous Nokiatune. Apparently, Nokia's default ring tone - Nokiatune (also called Grande Valse) is now the world's most-played melody: Or should we rather say most 'over-played', with a billion Nokia handsets in the world, 20% people not bothering or knowing how to change the default ringtone, and the average mobile phone ringing 9 times a day, that's freaking 1.8 billion plays every day - so Basically, the Nokiatune is played somewhere in the world about 20000 times every second. This is the same tone that everyone used to love hearing on their 3310 phones, that gradually went polyphonic on the 6600's and 6210's and stayed as a feel good factor for a short while. And today the only time you get to hear the Nokia ringtone is when the user of the phone has not changed the default settings on the phone. Nokia and its users abused the ringtone so much, if you Google it, you will find every damn remix of the ringtone that you can think of, right from Arabic space boy polyphonic to a Timbuktu hip-pop remix.

Think about it- as the world got more populated, it got noisier and noisier, and our reaction was to suppress some of the noises around us. And over a period of time, we have learnt to ignore sounds: like the noise that comes out of a car of the average stupid Pune driver who would honk at the signal even when there's a red light, or that loud drilling machine sound that you would hear for days when your neighbor is renovating the house. This makes our relationship with sound more or less unconscious. Even though we are not conscious of it, these sounds are obviously affecting us. And sound and memory are very closely linked, because as i say this you can hear me say this and understand it because you remember what i just said. Now consider the amount of times you have heard the Nokia ringtone. I remember a time when i would travel in a Mumbai local to get to work, and on days that i wasn't listening to my iPod, id hear the Nokia ringtone subconsciously atleast 3-4 times and consciously a few more times before the train would get me to my destination. This overuse has been THE root cause for the downfall of the brand and the way the new generation of mobile users perceives it. Ofcourse, we cannot take away the credit from the phone's software problems or bad performance and/or the awesomeness of other operating systems such as Android. So, people tend to move away from what they associate with at a particular age, or time as they grow older. Nothing really lasts with you forever. The Nokia phone is one such similar association. It was all cool until Blackberry and Apple launched their phones in India creating much better perceptions in the minds of the audience.

To conclude, pick up that Nokia phone in your house or workplace and play the Nokiatune once - as you listen to it play, you will know exactly why you don't want to buy a Nokia anymore.