Nokia’s N97 online campaign called Search for N came to an end a few weeks ago after running successfully globally. The competition was run in South Africa on blogs and Twitter and saw the Finnish company embrace Social Media in an effective and well-thought out manner.

I was super fortunate enough to have won one of these devices from @ChristopherM’s blog iMod and I have just collected my new Nokia N97 from a lunch event held at FTV in Fourways, Johannesburg by the team from Nokia and their marketing agency, Fleishman, where the South Africa’s lucky 10 winners were brought together for a great lunch, networking and of course to receive their prize, a brand spanking new Nokia N97. We are fortunate enough to be the very first owners of the N97 in SA and only 10 of these handsets are now in circulation as owned devices: the 10 winners of this competition.

Pic by @PaulJacobson - http://twitter.com/pauljacobson

I would like to express my thanks to @ChristopherM and his blog, iMod, for running the competition and for putting up with my pestering. He knows how badly I wanted to win the phone and is aware of the amount of lurking that I have done on his blog to get all 5 clues answered successfully. I have a lot of respect for iMod and many of you know that my blogging has been inspired by Chris’s work on iMod. A two-time winner of the Best Science & Technology Blog Award in the SA Blog Awards, I highly recommend that you visit his blog!

Nokia and Fleishman: To all those of you involved, THANK YOU and well done! I was truly impressed with the Social Media adoption that you have embraced and so successfully implemented. This was a unique campaign in SA and one that will be used as the benchmark for all other online socially integrated campaigns. Thank you for the Nokia N97 handset, the lunch and the trip to attend it. Your friendliness and welcoming attitude certainly did not go unnoticed and I think that I speak for all those who attended, when I say that you guys run an impressive operation!

To my readers, please brace yourselves for a flurry of Nokia N97 posts. I have always been a Nokia fan-boy and the short time that I have had to play with the device so far, has been truly impressive and I am super excited!