BlackBerry had its chance to make Justin Bieber its brand ambassador (at an affordable price as well) but they chose not to go this route as at the time they felt they didn’t need a young celebrity type ambassador. While BlackBerry is not known for marketing this could of been something that would of helped them as Justin Bieber turned out to be one of the biggest super stars in the music industry. See how it went down as BlackBerry passed on Justin Bieber:
One thing we missed out on was that Justin Bieber wanted to rep BlackBerry. He said, “Give me $200,000 and 20 devices, and I’m your brand ambassador,” basically. And we pitched that to marketing: Here’s a Canadian kid, he grew up here, all the teeny-boppers will love that. They basically threw us out of the room. They said, “This kid is a fad. He’s not going to last.” I said at the meeting: “This kid might outlive RIM.” Everyone laughed.
The RIM/BlackBerry stories continue as they work to regain a portion of their past success, for now Team BlackBerry has Alicia Keys, which has not been used as much as we would like, hopefully this changes in the near future. Nokia however wasted no time in trying to recruit Justin Bieber. Would you all of have liked to see the Biebs as a brand ambassador for BlackBerry?
Source: The Globe and Mail