
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
(see title and repeat until it hurts too much)
That's the funniest thing I've read since Dabbs's toilet blackout story (that was very funny too!)
Struggling mobe-makers Blackberry knocked back the chance to have pint-sized pop prince Justin Bieber as a brand ambassador at the peak of both RIM and Bieber's careers, claims a senior Blackberry staffer. The fresh-faced Canadian pop heartthrob asked for $200,000 and a fistful of free handsets to represent RIM, but the now- …
Don't think they're laughing much now.
Don't care for Bieber myself, but it does seem like a missed opportunity.
Of course, on the other hand they could have taken him up on his offer and been ridiculed anyway. I suspect that Blackberry was much too entrenched in corporate suit-land to take on such an ambassador. They probably thought it would taint their "professional" image.
Well, bankruptcy taints your image a lot more, doesn't it ?
Ah, hindsight.
Yeah, you're probably in marketing. Or a manager of some sort.
Listen genius, it's not about what you think, it's about what the customer thinks.
The customer, you might have heard from him.
He's the guy who's money we're after. Well not you of course, you're egotripping. But us, the working people who try to keep your company afloat. By making money for the company. And we still realise where that money is coming from: the customer.
"Listen genius, it's not about what you think, it's about what the customer thinks..."
" And we still realise where that money is coming from: the customer."
Well I guess it doesn't always take one to know one, because in this case the customer is 10 years from their own contract, so the customer is actually the customer's Mom & Dad. And Justin Beaver makes Dad want to puke.
But thanks for keeping all us dummies afloat, Mr. Sales Guy
The incident just shows how short sighted the top brass had become by then. One bad decision followed another. Organisations usually recover from one or two dumb decisions, but RIM made far too many of them, and continues to do so today. Somehow they must have thought that it was the name 'RIM' that was causing the slide in their fortunes, so they named it Blackberry. Instead of hopping onto another OS in time, they continued to waste time on their garbage. All this tells you something. It is the fact that when a company starts doing well, incompetent fools start populating the top echelon. The downfall begins but is masked by market growth. This growth eventually slows and a tipping point is reached. And once the fall begins... rescue becomes almost impossible. Not a very different story to Nokia, a giant of around the same time.
I'd say that Nokia is a special case. They were in the peak-but-starting-to-fall phase and had the hindsight to know they needed to choose a new CEO and change their direction if they wanted to avoid crashing. Unfortunately the CEO they chose pushed the yoke straight down and sent 'em faster down to the ground!
Nokia are not a special case at all, very similar situation to BB and Ericcson. These phones became popular for a reason; excellent design, reliability, etc etc. Then the shareholders / owners get greedy and so start to hire management consultants to tell them how to mushroom as major Corporates. Once they do that they lose the essence and some people of what they were originally. This can be fatal, it's like the butterfly effect, one small change can create a massive unseen impact. No need to continually grow and expand, why not just have a medium size business which keeps on being profitable but not necessarily growing too much, or even at all, can just tick over very nicely thank you.
Any listeners of the Hollywood Babble-On podcast here?
Every week for months now they've had some story about how the Beiber is increasingly tarnishing his previous "cute kid from Canada" image.
While RIM's fortunes have taken a turn for the worse and the comment “This kid might outlive RIM” may yet prove valid, there's a good chance that having used him as their marketing campaign would have accelerated the company's downfall.
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..until the prick got all 'Lindsay Lohan / Kerry Katona' on everyone and started behaving like the self-indulgent, self-obsessed, highly offensive twat he really is. At this point they became a PR liability rather than an asset to the brand.
Your right, his pr firm needs to take him down to the woodshed and then say to his remain fans that he is now living on a large farm with lots of space where he can run and play all day... of course if they did this before start his career it would of saved a lot of trouble.
Trouble? I don’t see any trouble. I see the little twerp getting free publicity all the time. Acting like a jerk or prima donna (sp?) or hard ass seems to get too many people’s names all over the news/internet for FREE. Most of these idiots don’t produce anything except hot air. Maybe that is the new free marketing avenue that the marketing departments are flinging now...
Paris is in the same league...
I'm sorry, but I don't know which timeline you tried, but I've just come back from the future and, by Q2 2014 there was/will be no loss. BB goes/went bankrupt in Q1 2014. There was/will be rumours that they tried to save the company through some dodgy software demanding 2 Bitcoins...
Wrong direction entirely. Bieber for Blackberry? No...just no.
Blackberry should have ignored the hype and hyperbole and marketed itself solely and wholly as a business communication tool...and continued to upgrade and improve its infrastructure, security and management tools.
End of story.
They should NOT have tried to compete in the popular handheld market where CRapps and games and being able to watch movies on your phone were of paramount importance.
If they'd stuck with their core brands and message they would have been fine, and I'd still be using one at work.
It is a funny story, but it's an amusing side anecdote. Marketing only works when the product does too. They may well have caught up, but.... perhaps too late.
It's like my Nan quotes from Shakespeare:
"And enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard their Currents turn awry, And lose the name of Action."
It's very unusual she quotes from Shakespeare, I guess the quote must have particular resonance for her.
I tend to think this was a loss for BB. I didn't catch when Bieber approached them. But if it was any time late 2011 up to now, then with the direction they where going they should have taken him on. They wanted to compete with the popular handheld market. I don't know too many kids today even in Waterloo who think of BB first when they go get a handset. Why should they. Even with the bad PR Justin gets now, and also received then, it would have got them noticed. Further he would have been noticed with the BB's meant for more casual usage. He might have been seen as a fad, but he was seen far and wide for all the kids who where in high school and walking into College. That's when I got my first phone was at that age. Most do. However I can see where BB's views would have made them cringe. It would have destroyed them as a business tool, unless they marketed that brand as separate.