Blackberry Case Solution

7/21/2019 Blackberry Case Solution

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BLACKBERRY Case Solution

Executive Summary

1. How could the public relations have handled the situation better to maintain the image

of Blackberry in the first place?

Ans: They could have handled the situation better by doing the following things:

In the social media world, RIM has taken a beating in the last several years from its

critics. Mostly because RIM sat back and did nothing. They’ve never used social media to

their advantage. For example, when the new RIM CEO announced his first earnings

report, in which the company said they lost money for the first time in seven years. They

should’ve created some kind of a social media campaign to fight back against all the

negative attention. It’s not like the company doesn’t have a faithful fan base. It has almost

11,000,000 likes on its Facebook page. A community the company could’ve easily tapped

and asked to rally to help fight back against all the negative sentiment. Unfortunately,

they’ve never fostered a community with those Facebook fans. They used them more like

a focus group to bounce ideas off, so the fans weren’t primed to help out in this situation

and become brand advocates as people are very active on social media platforms to voice

their opinions it could have been used for RIM advantage.

RIM failed because they had technical wizards at the helm who never valued the end-

users’ input. It was an engineer-driven culture…which worked as long as there wasn’t

any competition. Consumers had to accept what was handed down to them. The

BlackBerry Storm, launched in 2008, showed that RIM didn’t understand its consumer.

Came along Apple and Google who built companies that focused on the end user and who

truly knew their customers by giving them iPhone and Android devices and ate up RIM’smarket share. They could have asked their customers as to what they want as compared to

allowing them to shift.

Being the first mover in a market allows you to dominate it for a very long time. But it

can also lull you into sleep and have people in your company and the management get

really complacent. There was nothing bold or brash about the BlackBerry it was never

sold aggressively, and it never tried to penetrate new markets or drive deeper into current

ones. It was satisfied with the status quo and people started to lose passion for the

product, allowing competition to gain market share.

2. Suggest ways to Reposition and Rebrand Blackberry.

Ans: Blackberry can be repositioned by expanding its target market in the following manner:

a) Young Professionals:

This category includes two sub-categories, i.e. students and working professionals.

Students in their professional courses at post graduate level or above can be tapped as

the target audience. Similarly the younger working class people or the new working



professionals also come under this category. The age group can be termed in between

24-35 years. Basically people of this category lives in urban areas. In this segment we

are targeting people who are very passionate about their work. These people are pretty

much active on social networks also after their regular work hours. They are heavy

phone users, like to multitask and have a busy social life.

b) Companies (Specially IT Related):In this category we are trying to target the companies, especially IT ones. These

companies do heavy communication through internet and phones. They also require

working with people from foreign countries. The companies have security concerns

about corporate data including the emails. So Blackberry can serve the purpose as it is

known for its security features. Generally the companies are located in metropolitan

areas.

c) Current users of Blackberry:

The current users are loyal to the brand and are pretty comfortable with Blackberry

platform. So we will tap them to upgrade their current phones to the new phones at a

lower price via exchange offers.

The strategies of the campaign will be:

Make the young professionals realize that they need this only phone to keep balance

between their work and life.

Position the device as a one stop solution for the IT companies to balance their

employee’s corporate and personal needs in one phone.

Convince current users to upgrade their phones.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Message Strategy:

“Work, Life and the Pursuit of Balance”, this would be central theme of the

campaign.

Message Appeal:

The message will spread the idea of maintaining the perfect balance between the work

and life.

Rationale:

The target customers are currently on other platforms which don’t provide them ease

of access to balance their work life and personal life. So by this campaign we are

trying to position Blackberry as an ultimate solution to maintain the work life balance.



Execution:

TV Advertisement:

We are trying to create brand awareness on the theme of Work, Life and Pursuit of

Balance. The youth icon, Bradley cooper will be our celebrity endorser. We will

launch an advertising campaign based in national level TV channels which includes News Channels, Business Channels, Entertainment channels and Sports Channels.

Magazine Advertisements:

In magazine advertisements, we are targeting the young professionals who read print

magazines. We are also targeting IT companies and MNC’s for our product and hence we

will advertise in leading business and consultancy magazines.

Digital Advertisements:

• We are planning to create an social media campaign to engage and attract more

people onto the social media sites of Blackberry. We have designed the campaign in

which Contestants submit a video talking about how they balance their lives. 20

selected contestants’ profiles and videos will be uploaded on BlackBerry Event

Facebook Page. Fans vote by ‘liking’ the video and the top 5 contestants win. The

winner will get to feature in YouTube Commercial and win a Blackberry.

• Selected bloggers can be tapped to write about Blackberry in their blogs, which will

create more awareness and will give credibility to Blackberry.

• We have planned to launch a movement website which will help people to improve

their lives by sharing and caring.

Events, Billboards and Others:

The product can be advertised at roadside billboards, business hotels, events etc. We

can advertise the product using the daily commutation medium such as Metro Trains,

Bus Stations etc.

Medium Selection:

Total Budget: $ 60 million (Pan India)

Allocation:

TV: 72% - 43.2 million

Radio: 2% - 1.2 million

Print: 14% - 8.4 million

Digital: 5% - 3 million

Events: 2% - 1.2 million



Billboards/Displays: 3% -1.8 million

Others: 2% - 1.2 million

Digital Media:

The website, Search Engine Optimization and banner ads in other websites construct

the allocated budget of $ 3 Million.

Similarly the events, billboards and the miscellaneous advertisements will constitute$.1.2 million, 1.8 million, and 1.2 million respectively.

Campaign Flow Chart is shown below:

Digital Campaign will launch in January which will showcase "Coming Soon"

models...In February, Billboards and other direct marketing platforms will help

creating buzz...

For March, April and May, full fledge advertising campaign should run with front page

ads, Premium TV Spots etc.

During June, July, August, the advertising campaign needs to slow down and start to

push the customers through digital media campaigns, like the FB challenge etc.

During the later stage i.e. September, October, November, December, the campaign

will get more focused towards reinforcing the brand and preparing goodwill for next

product.

Blackberry Case Solution

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