I have been following BlackBerry since a long time and after analyzing the market trends of the smartphone industry, I decided on coming up with a series of articles depicting what might have gone wrong leading to BlackBerry’s fiasco!
Lets start with the decision on hiring Alicia Keys as their Creative Director.
This decision was greatly criticized after her accidental tweet from an iOS device, but I would say this was a pretty bold move from BlackBerry keeping in mind how rapidly its sales and shares were plummeting and loyal customers shifting to Apple.This daunting move was meant to be straight onto apple’s face, getting a music artist to adore BlackBerry meant a lot as most music artists are associated with iTunes so this was meant to fetch the much needed cynosure for the consumer segment.
After the success of BBM (BlackBerry Messenger) in the consumer segment and introduction of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), BlackBerry had no choice but to make consumer oriented products with an OS at par with android and iOS instead of boring business phones. And the best way to market such product was to induce change in it’s image; from a boring business mobility solution provider to a trendy consumer phone manufacturer. The new BlackBerry 10 OS with an innovative interface from its newly acquired QNX and few more changes like “BlackBerry App World” to “BlackBerry World” with apps as well as music, etc… was supposed to be the game changer.
The biggest change was the name, from “Research In Motion” to “BlackBerry Ltd.” So despite of the massive re-branding the name kept the conventional corporate image at the core! Pretty smart.Getting an endorsement from a celebrity was just a part of this massive re-branding meant to change the brand’s image to make it more appealing to the consumer segment.
So now the question arises, why “Alicia Keys”? And not just any prominent pop star like Lady Gaga or some celebrity using a BlackBerry P9981 (Porsche Design) or some sports star using a BlackBerry like Serena Williams, well something to be thought upon! Alicia Keys was a not so trending pop star with a myriad of Social Media followers (approx. 18 million twitter followers then) and a fan of iOS devices. The first motive was to get an apple user shift to BlackBerry to spark a wide spread discussion and secondly to create a wider and more effective outreach with her Social Media platform.
Then why didn’t it work out! Can a business man change to a pop star overnight? No, its impossible. Imagine Warren Buffet releasing a music album next year in January! Even if he changes it would be difficult for the world to believe that it’s really happening! So instead of hiring Alicia Keys, hiring some celebrity from the Sports or Fashion world would have been a better choice. Like David Beckham or someone from Elle would have been more appropriate as it would have easily associated the brand with something trendy along with the much needed value addition.
As of now, BlackBerry is back to Brand Ambassadors from the Business World and Mercedes McLaren F1 team.
Savvy Munshi 