BlackBerry readies ‘biggest ever’ marketing campaign for BB10
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Mobile World Congress: BlackBerry is readying its biggest ever marketing campaign to coincide with the launch of its BB10 operating system, which will highlight the brand’s core values of helping people “create, share and play” with content.
Rory O’Neill, BlackBerry’s EMEA vice president of marketing, told Marketing Week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that the company is working on a number of projects to coincide with the launch of its next generation of smartphones, to make the brand “more visible” about what it stands for.
“Our marketing going forward will tell the story of what the BlackBerry experience is all about: we are a brand that stands for action, people create things on BlackBerry devices that make things happen,” he said.
Mobile marketing will be a “huge” component of the BB10 launch campaign, to help reach its 75 million existing customers as well as looking to acquire new users.
O’Neill said: “Mobile marketing has the danger of being intrusive but people subscribe to services they find useful so you will see more of that [service-based] marketing from us so that users can engage with the brand wherever they are.”
BlackBerry will also utilise its social media presence, particularly its Facebook page that has more than 10 million fans, to help users create and share their BlackBerry stories.
“We recognise we may not have the deep pockets of some of our competitors so we have to be a bit sharper with our marketing - which we’ve always been historically.
BlackBerry is a fascinating brand and we’ve grown virally in many markets based on just delivering that promise of products that help people create and share,” O’Neill said.
As well as preparing for the launch of BB10, BlackBerry is also focusing on delivering mobile commerce services, having dubbed 2012 as the year NFC (Near Field Communications) will become mainstream.
O’Neill said mobile commerce continues the BlackBerry marketing story of the brand helping consumers to create and share experiences and offers partner brands more opportunities to get closer to their consumers.
He added: “Mobile commerce is beyond the mobile wallet and there is a tremendous opportunity for brands to go beyond the buyer/supplier relationship. Brands can now have a holistic view of the customer and serve them in an entirely new way, offering rich context based experiences.”
The RIM-owned company endured a tumultuous 2011, which included a global service outage in October that rocked its brand reputation and deterred consumers from buying new BlackBerry devices, such as its PlayBook tablet, which had only a fraction of rival Apple’s iPad shipments in the year.
In January BlackBerry’s co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie stepped down and a new leadership team is in place to lead the company’s “customer focused” turnaround strategy.
Readers' comments (7)
Jason Papp | Tue, 28 Feb 2012 12:24 pm
Looks like any other Blackberry. I'm not suprised that they have to spend a lot of pushing this product- its like spotting the difference between two Zebras.
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unlockorldwide | Tue, 28 Feb 2012 1:34 pm
Amid all the negative hype (regrettably justified) there is to my thinking one factor that may prove to be the BlackBerry's saving grace; most ... I repeat MOST of this 75 million subscribers TRUST their device.
Yes, there was a outage ... that's inconvenient, inadequate insecurity.
So, as RIM's O'Neil stated, we are moving into a new era of mobile phone usage where our device replaces our credit/debit card, where it serves as a money transfer tool (unless you are in India or Africa where it's old hat).
Most Europeans are nervous about that and TRUST in the security of their device will be paramount.
I didn't mention the USA because we have only recently found "chip and pin" worthy of introduction. Who knows whether we will worry about NFC.
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@peteandpettit | Wed, 29 Feb 2012 3:31 pm
i think this 2012/2013 will make or break Blackberry in the Mobile world. To be honest they are a well grounded company and with this market continuously changing they have a chance to get back in their and become market leader again.
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Nick | Thu, 1 Mar 2012 1:57 pm
Blackberry is really seen as a sunset technology, there are a number of die hards but others have now entered their smartphone marketspace where previously they were hardly challenged and outpaced and outdone them. The market share has dropped to such a small amount that they can never recover, it's time for them to sell the networks and little intellectual property they have and bow out gracefully
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Anonymous | Mon, 5 Mar 2012 10:27 am
You have to remember that for most users a Blackberry is not really a very smart smartphone. You simply can't have a proper smartphone with a screen the size of a matchbox. Apps, a key driver, come into play with a proper sized screen.
The significant majority of BB's are small screen whether they're corporate devices or low priced access products (that are really a stepping stone to android/Apple devices.)
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t.mellons | Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:57 am
I suggest you all wait for the new BB10 to be released before having such opinions. 2 years in the works, its going to blow everyone away.
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Soren | Thu, 15 Mar 2012 12:08 pm
@jason papp
it looks like any other blackberry because it's a current bb torch, not a new bb10 phone. You've been able to buy this one for months now. Understand the confusion though poppet
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