Vodafone's Jens Schulte-Bockum on handsets

Mark Street over at the Vodafone blog has posted up a new video featuring Jens Schulte-Bockum, Vodafone’s Global Director of ‘Terminals’ (or, ‘handsets’, as we say on SMS Text News), waxing lyrical about the company’s announcement of new handset initiatives. Key points being the introduction of Vodafone OEM handsets (one in six, I think Jens said, of all Vodafone handsets retailed are their own-brand devices) together with perspective on greater alignment between handset manufacturers (e.g. RIM).

I’m very much enjoying seeing Vodafone people talking — and, shock horror, displaying a degree of passion for their company and their activities — on this blog. There’s no media outlet in between cutting and editing away at what they think are the best bits. So when the chap, the interviewer (I’m afraid I still don’t know his name) asks if Jens reckons the Vodafone own-brand handsets are stylish, you can see Jens’

It’s particularly exciting seeing such a huge company experiment with the medium. I’m trying to think of another example of a comparable company doing this kind of thing. SMS Text News reader Ant reckoned I was a bit harsh on my comments about 3 dumping their X-Series blog (read his comment), especially when I described Vodafone as ‘leading the way’. 3 did, as Ant points out, ‘get the blog ball rolling’ only to dump it when they couldn’t be bothered to resource it. I’m very impressed that a behemoth like Vodafone is dipping a toe in the water. It’ll be fascinating to see how they manage and measure ROI and whether they consider introducing a continual blog.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying watching and reading.