Bollywood and the Nokia Bonus: The Serfs Strike Back

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By Miska Rantanen
     
      Voices have traditionally not carried very well from behind the imposing glass and steel facade of the Nokia HQ on Espoo's Keilaniemi shoreline.
      Details of the internal water-cooler discussions within the mobile phone manufacturer's premises have been so scanty that one has not always been sure whether the conditions of employees in our export goliath have been exceptionally delightful or truly grim.
      Now, however, a tiny chink has appeared in the protective wall.
     
Last Saturday an article appeared in Turun Sanomat reporting that Nokia would not be awarding staff a results-related "Connecting People" bonus for the second half of 2006.
      This irked many Nokia staffers (see related article).
      Although the decision to withhold the bonuses for the third and fourth quarter of 2006 was formally within the terms of the bonus programme, it seemed to the employees to be a dirty trick. According to the interim report for 4Q/2006 that had been released only a few days earlier, Nokia saw an increase in operating profit for the year of 18 per cent, to reach a thumping EUR 5.5 billion.
     
It did not take very long for the communications technology professionals to deliver their own stout riposte.
      By Tuesday, threads on the popular Suomi24.fi message boards were offering links to the pages of Bombay TV, where the Finnish company's personnel incentive policy was given a right royal roasting.
      Bombay TV is a French site with a free online service that allows you to create your own spoof movies using old film clips and your own - carefully chosen - subtitles. The comedy element lies in the fact that the visual material on offer is taken from Indian Bollywood B-movies.
     
At least three Nokia-related movies, each around a minute in length, quickly surfaced on the site.
      In the first, a stock arch-villain in the mould of the Ernst Blofeld character familiar from the Bond movies sits in a white leather swivel chair in front of an aquarium full of sharks, and announces smugly that there will be no bonuses this year.
      In the second, two young men drive their Porsche 911 in carefree fashion down the coast road, glorying in their impending bonus and car benefits, until a motorcycle cop in the shape of OPK [Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the Nokia President and CEO] flags them down and orders them to return their leasing car to the fleet management company.
      In the third clip, a disappointed female employee lets a director know how she has been slaving away all year but is missing out on a bonus for her pains. The director reminds her that the senior executives, too, have given their all for the company: "Last year we had to fly to Florida THREE times for seminars! Think about that!"
     
The Bombay TV site's shtick of playing with Bollywood clichés is not as such a new idea, but is in fact a knock-off of an original gag used four years ago by Coca-Cola Denmark, in an ad campaign to promote the Fanta Shokata elderberry and citrus soft drink line.
      The Danish page became an instant smash, and in the first two months it was operational, it recorded nearly two million unique hits.
      The service was taken on board by more than just Danish teenagers, too. For instance, Finns writing on the Päihdelinkki [Addiction Link] discussion forum put together numerous subtitling exercises in which the themes were not really related to soft drinks, but to other somewhat stronger stimulants.
      The Fanta Shokata or "Shakin' Shokata" advertising campaign was undoubtedly very effective, since the now defunct pages are still fondly remembered on the message boards. In the absence of the original, Bombay TV has to serve as a substitute arena.
     
And what happened to the Nokia people? Well, things didn't turn out too badly for them.
      On Wednesday Nokia announced it was going to look into the incentive bonus system to see if there was room for improvements. In particular, the "Connecting People" bonus scheme is to be given a long hard look.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.2.2007
     
The article is one in a series under the banner "From our Internet Correspondent" in which various WWW news items, phenomena, and oddities are put under the microscope.

More on this subject:
 Subtitles in English: a rough and ready translation

Previously in HS International Edition:
  Nokia personnel fume over bonus cuts (1.2.2007)

Links:
  "Blofeld" delivers the bad news (Bombay TV)
  "Take your leasing car back!" (Bombay TV)
  "The executive board has to work hard, too, you know" (Bombay TV)

MISKA RANTANEN / Helsingin Sanomat
miska.rantanen@hs.fi