It's out with the old and in with the new as RIM rebrands itself with a new name, a new operating system and a new phone. It's a bold step for a company that made several missteps after ruling the smartphone segment and believes it must start over from scratch with new products and a new brand.
By changing its name and launching an excellent operating system that runs on impressive phones, BlackBerry is doing more than writing a new chapter. It's starting a new book. The importance of this cannot be overstated as the company that once defined the smartphone segment struggles to remain relevant in the era of Google and Apple.
The new attitude was evident from the moment CEO Thorsten Heins took the stage in New York to finally launch the long-awaited and delayed BlackBerry 10 operating system and Z10 and Q10 handsets. Before he got down to the business of pitching his products, Heins took a moment to praise the employees in the crowd and thank founder and former CEO Mike Lazaridis for his hard work. Formalities completed, Heins announced, "From today on, we are BlackBerry everywhere in the world," rebranding the company before Lazaridis was back in his seat.
The rebranding accompanies the release of the operating system and phones that RIM ... er, BlackBerry desperately hopes will turn the company round. It's a Hail Mary pass for a company that held 44.5 percent of the domestic market in 2006 but watched that slip to 8.4 percent in September because of Android and Apple. BlackBerry must turn things around quickly if it is to survive. It looks promising at this point. BB10 is quick, it's stable and it's packed with cool features. The Z10 is a nice bit of hardware. But none of this will matter if BlackBerry can't get consumers excited and make them forget the missteps and mistakes of the past five years.
That's where the rebranding comes in. Changing the name to BlackBerry tackles one of the biggest problems the Canadian company always faced -- creating a cohesive brand and image. The company was RIM, the phones were BlackBerrys and no one outside the IT guys supporting the phones and the rabid business types using them could, or would, keep it all straight.
"The problem they've had all along is that they've had two names for a product that only had one," said Hayes Roth, chief marketing officer of the branding firm Landor Associates. "Trying to get the world to understand what RIM meant and who they actually were was an uphill battle from the start."
That's no way to grow a business or attract new customers. Bringing everything under the same name provides a single, recognizable name that customers can latch onto and remember.
"Simplification helps brands get closer to customers, and gets rid of stuff in between," said Russ Meyer, global strategy director of Siegel+Gale. "We think it's probably a good thing. It makes a lot of sense. "
Although BlackBerry was instantly recognizable to legions of businesspeople, RIM was never a household name. The company always knew this. So it decided to capitalize on the name recognition of its product.
"BlackBerry is a global iconic brand, and outside of North America most people don't know RIM." corporate communications manager Rebecca Freiburger said via email. "The decision also was to transition this organization to a branded house over that of a house of brands."
It's a smart move, said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi, because it bolsters BlackBerry's new direction. But "the change in name alone is not enough," she said. BlackBerry must educate consumers about its products and convince them that it's no longer the company that provides a phone that's good for email and corporate security and little else. It needs to convince people that its operating system is a worthy alternative to iOS6 or Android and its phones are as cool as the iPhone or Google Nexus 4. And it has to provide an app and media ecosystem that can hold its own against the Apple App Store and Google Play.
At first glance, the software and hardware are up to the task. BlackBerry has done a solid job building an OS and phones people will actually use because they want to, not because their corporate IT departments say they have to. Which means the engineers and coders and developers have done their jobs. Now it's up to the guys in marketing to do theirs.
To that end, BlackBerry will have a commercial during the Super Bowl. It won't comment on what the ad cost, much less how much it will spend marketing the new products and rebranded company, but with a price tag reported at $4 million for a 30-second spot, the Canadian company is going all in.
It has to. BlackBerry must convince its small, but passionate, base to stay with the program while also attracting new customers who might have never considered a Z10 or Q10. That's going to be tough, because Android leads the market with 52.5 percent and Apple holds another 34.3 percent.
"While BB10 seems to have a similar platform and experience, users on other devices will have to be convinced that BB10 offers something much better," said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
This is the landscape BlackBerry is venturing into as it completes a rebranding that actually started about a year ago when Heins implemented a new leadership team, new culture and new products. The company formerly known as RIM made a lot of mistakes over the years, but as Roth noted, one of the best things about changing the company's name is it effectively buries the past. All those mistakes belong to RIM.
In that way, Heins isn't rebranding a company. He's building a new one. But that was the easy part. Now the hard work begins: Convincing consumers that this new company can take on Google and Apple.
Additional reporting contributed by Alexandra Chang.
