From efficiency to emotion: The Nokia campaign that redefined mobile advertising in India

At a time when mobile phones were sold as productivity tools and status symbols, one campaign quietly shifted the conversation to something far more human. Nearly three decades later, that creative pivot—driven by insight, restraint and emotion—was revisited as the Indian advertising industry gathered to honour one of its most influential voices.

The evening of December 19 marked a defining moment for India’s advertising fraternity as Prasoon Joshi was conferred the AAAI Lifetime Achievement Award by the Advertising Agencies Association of India (AAAI). The ceremony brought together stalwarts from advertising and cinema, but it was a retrospective on one iconic campaign that stood out—Nokia’s early “Connecting People” work that altered the course of mobile advertising in the country.

Reflecting on that pivotal moment, Partha Sinha, Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company & Founder, ABLTY Advisory LLP, took the audience back to the late 1990s, when mobile telephony was still in its infancy in India. At the time, Sinha was a strategic planner at Ogilvy & Mather, Delhi, working alongside veteran adman Prasoon Joshi, who was a young copywriter then.

When mobiles were about efficiency

Cellular services were first introduced in India in 1995. Between 1996 and 1999, mobile networks reached metro and select urban centres, but expensive handsets and high call rates ensured that mobile phones remained a luxury. Unsurprisingly, advertising in the category followed a predictable script.

“Almost every brand—globally and in India—communicated one core idea: the mobile phone makes you more efficient,” Sinha recalled in a conversation with Storyboard18. “The imagery reflected that thinking. You’d see someone sitting in a park with an office desk in front of them. The message was about productivity—carrying your office in your pocket.”

Sinha, however, was unconvinced by this dominant narrative. The idea that people aspired to be productive round the clock felt deeply flawed to him. “Nobody I know wants to do more work,” he said. “They may want to do better work, but that’s different. The communication suggested that even when you’re not in the office, you should still be working.”

Changing the narrative

Joshi and Sinha believed the real opportunity lay elsewhere. Instead of selling efficiency, they wanted to foreground emotion. “Why not say, ‘You can stay in touch with people at home when you’re not there?’” Sinha recalled. “The personal space felt far richer and more truthful to us.”

At the time, phone advertising was also obsessed with form factor—how small and discreet the handset was. “But we felt a big story was being missed,” Sinha said. “The real truth of mobile telephony was emotional, not functional.”

A radio experiment

With little appetite initially for a film or print execution, Joshi chose to experiment with radio—a medium that still commanded immense power at the time. According to Sinha, Joshi was exceptional at radio writing.

Joshi crafted a spot centred on a simple, evocative idea: a successful man who has lost touch with his mother. Busy and consumed by life, he slowly realises what he has been missing. The line that anchored the narrative—“Zindagi ki raftaar mein, rishton ko peeche na chhodein”—would later become inseparable from Nokia’s brand philosophy.

Recalling the process, Joshi noted that the radio spots generated an unusually strong response. “Apart from the mother spot, there was also one about your favourite schoolteacher that people loved,” he said. “The reaction was so overwhelming that we decided to adapt the radio idea into a television film, which was rare at the time.”

This thinking found support in Nokia’s then managing directors, Parikshit Bhasin and Sanjeev Sharma, who approved the idea.

From sound to screen

Joshi explained that audio and audio-visual storytelling demand very different approaches. “Audio allows listeners to imagine and connect the dots in their own way,” he said. “A film, however, defines the imagery for you.”

Ad film director Prasoon Pandey played a crucial role in translating the idea visually. To preserve the emotional universality of the script, Pandey chose to keep the mother largely out of focus in the film. “That allowed viewers to project their own mothers into those moments,” Joshi said, adding that it helped protect the sanctity of the written word and the imagination it invited.

Sinha noted that the campaign marked the first time Nokia’s global tagline truly came alive. “The line ‘Connecting People’ had existed, but it had been fairly functional until then,” he said. “This was when it genuinely earned its meaning.”

Crafting the visual language

Pandey recalled that once the decision to make the film was taken, the central question was how to translate the words into imagery. “Radio relies entirely on imagination,” he said. “A film needs a visual language that does justice to the writing.”

His inspiration came from childhood—particularly the playful ways children communicate with their mothers. One visual referenced children tying a thread to a matchbox and pretending it was a telephone. “As we grow older, that playfulness fades,” Pandey said. “I felt those tender memories would beautifully complement the emotion of the script.”

The film was shot in Khotachiwadi, the heritage village in Girgaon, South Mumbai.

A category shift

The biggest challenge, according to Sinha, was that the idea ran counter to prevailing wisdom. Until then, mobile phones were never positioned as tools that made people more human. “Often, ideas like these only make sense once they’re executed,” he said. “The power becomes evident only after you see the film.”

Released in the late 1990s, the campaign met with what Sinha described as “truly dramatic” success, going on to win several prestigious awards.

More importantly, it reshaped the category. “This campaign changed how mobile phones were perceived,” Sinha said. “Not as devices that make you a better worker, but as ones that make you a better human being. Over time, other brands began recognising—and following—the emotional power of mobile connectivity.”