[CHIP72]

Mercedes Benz had an ad last night for a new car that will not go on sale until September 2013.

Do smartphone manufacturers typically do that?

Ironically, the mediocrity of Blackberry's Super Bowl ad may indirectly help (or more accurately, not hurt) them; if Blackberry had a more memorable ad, more people would be inquiring about BB10 and at least some of those people would be disappointed and turned off when they found out no BB10 smartphones will not be available until March.

In all seriousness, I wonder if Blackberry had to make a near-last minute scramble on the commercial they planned to show based on the fact there is a longer delay on releasing the BB10 smartphones in the U.S. than they anticipated. I wouldn't be surprised if the following video (which I'm sure has been linked elsewhere on crackberry.com), in excerpted form, was the one they intended to show:



The other question the Super Bowl ad raises in my mind is how far in advance the TV ad time during the game needs to be bought. It's possible Blackberry bought the ad time months ago, before they knew there was going to be delay in releasing BB10 smartphones in the U.S. The unmemorable Blackberry commercial that was shown would make sense in that context; they had to show something, so show a mildly amusing fluff commercial. On the other hand, if Blackberry didn't need to get locked in to the ad spot until the last few weeks, for multiple reasons they should have just saved their money and not shown any commercial at all.