This is really late for my third assigned blog post, but better late than never right?

Last week, BlackBerry released its BBM messaging service for iOS and Android. This highly anticipated move netted 10 million downloads on day one of release, and has since reached 20 million users as of today. My question is, what does Blackberry hope to achieve from that?

What distinguishes BBM from its competitors such as Whatsapp and WeChat is that it is free, and its interface is much more streamlined than any other data messaging service on the market. It therefore possesses a competitive advantage over its other messaging services, but in the end, how is BlackBerry going to make money off making BBM available to non-BlackBerry users?

Since BlackBerry Entered the smartphone market late, marketing from the two tech giants Google and Apple have already shaped customers to see iPhone and Android phones as their trusted choices for smartphones. Though BBM would raise more awareness of BlackBerry as a company, I don’t feel that anyone would ever look to BlackBerry as a possible alternative because they have already been shaped to side with Apple and Samsung for example. It’s difficult to capitalize on a free app. Any attempt to monetize the app by adding a subscription fee or in-a

pp advertisements would more than likely cause BBM’s subscriber base to plummet, if not disappear entirely. We will see in the coming months how it all plays out for BlackBerry.

reference article: http://www.knowyourmobile.com/blackberry/20380/bbm-android-iphone-its-finally-here

With ever increasing connectivity to the internet, social media has become a staple of modern social interaction. The social media giant Facebook began with a respectable 1 million users at the end of 2004. Currently, Facebook has over 1 billion active users, a thousand fold  over its 2004 figure. With so many people online and using social media on a day-to-day basis, use of social media for marketing purposes has proven an effective way to inform consumers about new products.

The original “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” video has since garnered over 46 million views.

One of my favourite examples of effective social media marketing is the Old Spice: “Smell Like a Man, Man” campaign, which advertised men’s deodorant products. In their charming and creative commercials,  (which were run traditionally on television, as well as spread all over social media websites via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others), the narrator addressed a female audience on how “their man” could smell better. In doing so, Old Spice not only conveyed the image that men who smell better are capable of the impossible (by having the narrator do ridiculous things such as turn a goat into a harp) but also tapped into the social aspect of consumerism by addressing the “ladies” that would like their “man” to smell better.

The whole marketing campaign relied heavily on the use of social media outlets to spread their videos virally. It increased sales figures by 107%, and now has a strong fan base in the internet community. I feel that Old Spice has also re-branded itself to appeal more to a younger, more Internet savvy generation with its use of ridiculous humor in its commercials. With the world continuing to integrate technology into their lives, There is no doubt that social media will increasingly strengthen as a means of marketing products.

link to the original video: http://youtu.be/owGykVbfgUE

sources:

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2010/08/31/the-10-best-social-media-campaigns/

http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/08/30/11-social-media-marketing-lessons-from-the-old-spice-campaign/