The smartphones market welcomes a new product—yesterday, January 30, RIM launched “the re-designed, re-engineered, and re-invented BlackBerry platform” at the event, which was held in six cities—New York, Toronto, London, Paris, Dubai, and Johannesburg—at the same time. Along with the unveiling of the new platform and product, the tech giant has made another major announcement—the company’s name was changed from RIM to BlackBerry to build a stronger connection between the product and the manufacturer.
The new platform powers two new LTE-enabled smartphones, BlackBerry Z10 (all-touch) and “its little brother” BlackBerry Q10 (with physical keyboard). The new devices, created both for work and entertainment with their 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal storage and an expandable memory card slot, are designed “to deliver a faster, smarter experience that continuously adapts to your needs” as well as “keep you moving,” as described Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of BlackBerry.
They got a plethora of features, which help take consumers’ experience to the next level—BlackBerry Hub to manage all the conversations in one place, the BlackBerry 10 browser, BlackBerry Balance to secure work application from personal content, a leaning, adaptable keyboard, BlackBerry Messenger (voice calling and video chat included), BlackBerry World, which has 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps and many more. The new devices are launching in the UK (today), Canada (February 5) and the UAE (February 10), and will appear on the global market starting April.
BlackBerry is also rolling out a new marketing campaign (estimated at more than $200 million, The New York Times reports), which is said to be the biggest one in the company’s history. For the promotion, the brand is partnering with six advertising agencies, which will be responsible for different parts of the groundbreaking promotional initiative—they are Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO (creative and brand efforts), Publicis Groupe (digital efforts), Proximity (customer relationship marketing), Phonevalley (mobile initiatives), Brodeur Partners (public relations) and Edelman (social media).
The new campaign for Z10, which will focus on the widely-used “motion” theme (most likely, chosen as tribute to the initial name of the company, Research in Motion), will carry a simple tagline, “Keep moving,” and some of the advertisements will feature the “Built to keep you moving” phrase. Those, who choose BlackBerry smartphones from the variety of other offers, are “doers, achievers, people of action. They are about getting things done, success-oriented, multitasking and hyperconnected,” commented Frank Boulben, chief marketing officer at BlackBerry. In the new campaign, “the hero will be the product… each piece of marketing will showcase a feature of the user experience,” he added.
Following other tech brands like Intel and Polaroid, who tapped entertainers as their creative innovation leaders, BlackBerry invited Alicia Keys to become its global creative director and the new face—the celebrity is to front the brand’s upcoming advertisements. On the brand’s official page, Keys, Robert Rodriguez and Neil Gaiman are inviting the global audience to join them on their own groundbreaking project with BlackBerry and encouraging each of us to collaborate with them on this undertaking. More details will follow soon.