Blackberry: The Timid Tightrope Act

After a relatively weak attempt to distance themselves from the pigeonholed world of the businessman, RIM, creators of BlackBerry, have decided to go back to the corporate masses of suits, ties, heels, and pencil skirts that made them successful by advertising the new BlackBerry Playbook in some of the world’s biggest business hubs: international airports.

Large terminal wrap-around banners, escalator branding and even totem poles are all to be used in the Delhi and Mumbai airports with the taglines (written in English): "Work smarter. Play harder." Of course this is the perfect target audience – tech-savvy, affluent, on-the-go and captive for at least a couple of hours while they wait for their next flight to board. These are the people who will be most interested in a device touted by BlackBerry as "the world’s first professional grade tablet" and there is nothing wrong with that.

That is, unless you have spent the last two years trying to appeal not to the corporate customer, but instead to an up-and-coming generation loaded with opinion leaders and even more disposable income. BlackBerry developed products like the Blackberry Torch 9800 that appealed to this audience with its super-slick touch-screen and neat slider keyboard and its proprietary BlackBerry Messenger. Of course, the Playbook could feasibly fit right in with these products and it could have been a further step away from the stuffy business mantra that BlackBerry had taken on previously.

But instead it appears as if RIM and BlackBerry have taken one step forward and two steps back in terms of marketing and demographics. Its new Playbook marketing campaign seems to signal that it is at peace with a slide back into business world mediocrity rather than continuing to force a move into the limitless untapped youth market.

Some would argue that RIM and Blackberry have simply found their niche and are sticking with it. To which the response would be: Why attempt to branch out in the first place? Why create the BlackBerry Pearl if you are satisfied with appealing solely to the board room? Why bother with including a 1 GHz duel-core processor on the Playbook if it is only to be used for spread sheets and TPS reports?

Because RIM has attempted to imitate the circus performer by tight-rope walking two different market segments, trying to keep steady as they move on from the boring world of the CFO but not confident enough to walk all the way out towards the new demographic. This is a shame, because the Playbook would have been the perfect opportunity to stand out in the centre ring under the big top.