RIM, Research In Motion, has lost quite a bit of market share over the last few years to Android and the iPhone. The company had it’s Co-CEO’s step down recently and there’s talks of some other changes to help them get back to where they were.
Well, it seems one of those changes is a new marketing campaign. Instead of sticking to something traditional, they decided to go the completely opposite: Cartoon superheroes. Dubbed “The Bold Team”, they’re four superheroes who do, well, we’re not exactly sure at this point.
This is part of CEO Thorsten Heins’ plan to keep the BlackBerry line of smartphones afloat while they wait for the BlackBerry 10 smartphones to arrive.
“Oh, right, no – it’s “The Bold Team,” an almost comically uncool smoothie of computer-analyzed audience data blended down into four poorly drawn characters. Never mind – this makes the Computer Whiz Kids look hip.”
“For those of you under the age of 30, by the way, the TRS-80 Computer Whiz Kids was a line of promotional comics released free by Radio Shack stores that featured two kids solving crimes with their TRS-80 PCs.”
You can check out RIM’s infographic about them here .
“Marketing isn’t the company’s main problem, of course. The products are. North American users have very little love for the messaging-focused BlackBerry 7, which looks like a laggard in a smartphone market that’s now all about apps and the Web. Heins knows that, I think. Although he’s careful not to deride the company’s existing product line, he’s made it clear that getting new phones out on time, bug-free and with the features people demand will be a priority.”
Do you think RIM has a good or bad campaign here?
