It’s fair to say that BlackBerry’s BlackBerry 10 launch hasn’t exactly been as big and bold as it was initially hoped, but the company has taken steps to ensure that BlackBerry 10 ends up in as many hands as humanly possible: by commissioning full-screen advertisements for the platform, which will be sent out to users of iPhones and Android devices as early as next week.
The move is certainly an audacious one for the embattled Canadian manufacturer, and it’s one which chief marketing officer Frank Boulben hopes will pay dividends.
Boulben, who referred to BlackBerry’s attempts to regain a foothold in the smartphone market as ‘the greatest comeback in tech history’ when speaking to Forbes, has taken steps to ensure that BlackBerry’s new marketing tactic, known in the industry as a takeover, will reach millions of users of rival hardware with full-screen ads that demo the operating system’s innovative new features, such as Time Shift, making it look like the effects are happening in real-time on people's devices.
While the tactics will certainly put BlackBerry 10 out there it may yet turn out to be a disaster for BlackBerry. As a rule most users don’t take kindly to invasive advertising, and many opt to employ pro-active methods such as ad-blocking software to prevent them from occurring in the first place, so attempts at luring customers with such a strategy may in fact push users further away.
One thing’s for sure, you can’t fault BlackBerry’s fight, and there are many cool features in its BlackBerry 10 OS, that much is certain, but we can’t help thinking that if you have to foist your product on unsuspecting users then you’re missing the big picture – and that is to give people what they want, not what you think they should want.
by tcrammond via Featured Articles
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