RIM’s Rebranding: Can you really bring back the dead?
Feb 5th, 2013 by kevmason
Hey, did you hear about that new Blackberry Z10? Oh wait, that’s not really the big news…
At its Blackberry 10 Launch, Thorsten Heins (CEO) shocked the world when he announced RIM’s new beginning as “Blackberry”. When the crowd simply expected the release of the latest smartphone, the company’s new slogan – “Re-designed. Re-engineered. Re-invented.” – opened up a whole opportunity for the company. After plummeting sales, Blackberry has made one last ditch effort to save itself; introducing new products, brand, tagline, celebrity spokesperson and Super Bowl ad. In Andrew Maia’s Blog, he comments that this will either be “one of the greatest tech revivals since Apple, or a last hurrah before the final drop in its monumental fall.”
I’d like to use this blog post to expand on Andrew’s quote.
Source: http://cdn3.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/7610277/DSC_0953-2_large_verge_medium_landscape.jpg
At this point, Blackberry has now put all of its odds in its product design. Its company image is 100% attached to their Blackberry products, and its outcome will completely depend on how well these new smartphones compete with Apple’s iPhone 5 and Android’s higher-end smartphones. In order to make a full revival, Blackberry will have to reshape its current technology – similar to what Apple did.So they released a complete touchscreen phone. Does it come with any new, ground-breaking features? Well, not really. It’s just a completely new look for Blackberry – which works, I guess. But if they want to revive itself like Apple did, it’s going to have to introduce something big to the world. Apple introduced iTunes and the iPod family – revolutionizing the music industry into a new digital age. It also introduced the iPhone, bringing in a completely new, revolutionary, user-intuitive smartphone into the market. And who did they target? Everyone.
Source: https://s3.amazonaws.com/fgna/photo/40uiah6j/x7el8czm/large/BlackberrySmashed.jpg?1321294732
And maybe that’s Blackberry’s issue: they’re too focused on saving their brand image as “the business phone”. Apple and Android were able to overtake the “business phone” market by producing phones that were more intuitive, becoming attractive to both the general population and business professionals. Blackberry has stayed in its corner, focusing on the professionals instead of looking to the big market.Blackberry was certainly bold with its new rebranding. The only way I see Blackberry digging itself out is by changing its target market focus, introducing some new revolutionary tech/productivity breakthrough, and promoting its new brand at every possible street corner. Apple was able to dig itself out by being a marketing genius; but can Blackberry do the same?
In all honesty, I doubt it. “Research in Motion” seemed to be stationary for the last 10 years.