BlackBerry has great products and fantastic people working there. Love that it is a Canadian company. There have unfortunately been a few marketing delays. If we were running BlackBerry (BB) we would revamp the marketing and marketing strategy.
How to do BB marketing differently?
There are a lot of passionate users and developers for Black Berry. Driving the demand through passion for your product and people is key.
Marketing for consumers and enterprises is different. Consumers love to see passion and fall in love with the image that owning the product gives them and not just the capabilities of products.
One thing I would like to see in BB for the consumer market is fun factor. One way of doing this is creating an augmented reality campaign. I liked what Vital was doing with their campaign in Turkey with an augmented reality soccer stadium (https://spring2innovation.com/augmented-reality-in-action/)
Would BB stores have helped? Perhaps getting the latest products into the hands of consumers to trial would have increased buzz and knowledge of the product. This is most effective when people passionate about the product are demoing, rather than retailers and providers selling usage plans. I know when I saw the Q10 and Z10 and got a chance to play around with them I was close to throwing out my Android phone. I am a big supporter of Google and Android but if my contract were coming up for renewal at that point I would have gone with a Black Berry.
That brings up the topic of renewal plans for mobile phones. Apple has been good at coming up with new phone versions timed around cell coverage plans provided by telecommunications companies. While the latest Apple iPhone was lack luster the sales set new records partly through those wanting to upgrade their hardware (replace their older iPhones). Capturing the diehard Apple user market used to be a tough sell but is now doable.
Keep Doing BlackBerry
More applications: The creation of development camps and courses for developers is good. Although it may have been making developers uncomfortable as they saw BB’s desperation when the Playbooks were being given away not that long ago to potential developers for their operating system. If more of the IOS and Android applications were available through BB it would make BB more competitive.
Ecosystem: The ecosystem is getting better with HTML 5 and other advancements in software development platforms.
BBM: The release of BBM was a positive step. We were a bit surprised with this announcement initially but then thought about the potential. They were essentially giving away their main differentiator. But they were opening themselves up for other opportunities to be a main stay on all operating systems. We’ll be watching how BBM is being monetized going forward closely.
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