Abysmal
I'd be embarrassed if Blackberry thought I fitted into the demographic that was aimed at. Maybe that's why I bailed last year!
RIM's latest marketing stunt has succeeded in attracting a high degree of attention – but not necessarily of the type that the struggling company may have intended. As 2011 drew to a close, RIM asked BlackBerrians to tweet their "Bold" New Years' resolutions to the hashtag #BeBold, and last Friday the company introduced a …
Spatula armed Gogogirl? Really? Oh my. How many shades of wrong is this? It confirms that Blackberry is being run by some really clueless (hopefully old) guys. :) The sad thing, is this was an actual serious marketing effort, and upon it's DOA'dness, they just pulled the standby classic when a statement goes wrong during a conversation and it is too late to take it back - "JUST KIDDING! HAHA"
I'd show that graphic to my wife for a laugh, but I'd get an earful about it, so I won't.
Joke alert, cause that campaign should've been...
If you want to sell to hoodies you use a proper gangsta rap ad campaign. Make sure the lead vocalist has had at least a couple of illegal firearms convictions. An aggravated assault or two should help as well.
Some companies just deserve to die. They had the business audience and they failed it miserably by failing to understand it. They have the H&H audience now and it looks like they will fail that too by thinking that a go-go girl with a spatula is an image which will appeal to H&H (Hood and Hooker).
One wonders where the world would be, if we just could stop making random products and using gigantic efforts to sell those products, and instead just ask people what they wanted to have, and produce that.
Blackberry could have it so simple. Just produce a set of "intelligent terminals" which log into a central server via SSH. Then define some open "screen terminal" standard so people can simply write programs to be used over that SSH link, perhaps even port "dialog" to it.
That way system administrators can easily integrate those devices into their network. Whatever legacy system they have, as soon as they can interact with it via a command line, they can write a little shell wrapper to make it available via those Blackberry.
Those devices wouldn't be just "portable browsers with proprietary e-mail" anymore, but multi-function terminals which could do anything. That way you could also use less powerful CPUs, and better, low power screens giving you proper multi-day battery times.
Well but they see that there's been an iPhone, and now they believe they need to out-iPhone the iPhone, instead of catering to those who want something else.
"One wonders where the world would be, if we just could stop making random products and using gigantic efforts to sell those products, and instead just ask people what they wanted to have, and produce that." quoth Mr Berger.
The trouble with THAT approach is neatly summed up by the words (falsely) attributed to Henry Ford - "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."
Being from the UK and in my mid-fifties, I think of scientific and medical careers when I see the word 'spatula'. Could it be that the US usage of the word to mean 'food mixing implement' is causing some misunderstanding? (RIM is a Canadian company so perhaps a Canadian commentard could let us know the usual interpretation there.)
I see this kind of tat all the time from those higher up the devolutionary ladder, usually in the form of mugs (Ha, how appropriate), pens, notepads and unsealed packs of mints.
They used to provide stress balls with trite messages printed on them, they stopped doing those for some reason or other....
However I never thought I'd ever see a "super strategy / peak push" actually escape from the office and make it into the real world.
You're right , that is just a picture. An infographic is a visual explanation of an often complex subject. Good infographics are informative pieces of art.
Sorry. Got a bit pedantic there but as someone who loathes "business speak" but loves good graphic design, I felt compelled to defend the legitimacy of the word "infographic"
Excrable. The mind boggles at how shite like this ever gets released 'in to the wild'....reminds of an internal 'advertising' campaign run by C&W that 'aligned' certain business behaviours with some graphics artists brain fart of an 'alien' character that was supposed to 'inspire & energtise' the worker bees to 'change the culture'. It weathered a mercifully short period of derision before being humanely shot. Hopefully RIM will do the same...
Why did the RIM marketing team cross the road? Because they had all been sacked.
RIM's marketing team from the past year and now this would if compteletly removed more than likely be better for the company. Not sure if some have already lined up escape routes out but somebody has a job elsewere lined up if you release marking material that might as well be selling anal bleach - the RIM BOLD Team.
Redo a parady of the duracell bunny with few suits with `other` phones walking doing emails and phone calls and show the blackberry going and going when the others have stopped. Then when somebody complains, you get even more PR. Simple win win compared to this drunken plane induced enlightenment.
This will go down as the definative definition of the FAIL ICON for me.