[DISCLAIMER]
Hello, my name is Pierce Ujjainwalla, and I am an iPhone user. So despite my bias in phones, let me reassure everyone that my phone preference has nothing to do with the following post. THE EPIC MARKETING FAIL
RIM seems to be trying to get in touch with their hipster side with their recent commercials featuring [well known?] artists like Diplo, the Martinez Brothers and most recently Meridith Valiando.
The most recent instalment features the founder of the DigiTour, a company that creates music tours featuring self-made YouTube sensations. The founder, Meridith, says 'I get somewhere around a thousand emails a day... try writing a thousand emails on a touch screen!'.
"Try writing a thousand emails on a touch screen!"
Although I don't find it hard to write emails on a touch screen, maybe some people do. Fair enough. Blackberry has the keyboard, a main product differentiator. Good - they are positioning themselves in the market for people who write lots of emails, and offer keyboards on the phones to do it. Great strategy... annnnnd let me now present to you RIM's newest phone, coming out later this year... The Blackberry 10:
 |
| Where is the keyboard? |
Timing is everything.
The commercial taking a shot at touch screens was aired right around the same time as the world was getting the first sneak peaks at the Blackberry 10. And let me just say, the Blackberry 10 has some pretty awesome features like predictive words and a really cool camera feature that allows you to dynamically change elements of the photo on the fly. In any case, their marketing was not supporting the new phone.
I'm sure there is a perfectly good reason for why this happened, however it's unfortunate that they were not airing commercials that generated buzz for their new phone as opposed to bashing the very features it will have.
The good news about all of this is that the phone looks like it can sell itself and hopefully when the phone is released later this year people will have forgotten all about Meridith and how hard it is to type emails on a touch screen.
The good news about all of this is that the phone looks like it can sell itself and hopefully when the phone is released later this year people will have forgotten all about Meridith and how hard it is to type emails on a touch screen.
