[CrackBerry Question]

Part of BB10's failure was lack of advertising. Priv is a fantastic device. I think one of best on the market. Yet there is absolutely no advertising in our newspapers about this. Does BB want to doom this device to failure? Why aren't they promoting this?

[David Tyler]

Part of BB10's failure was lack of advertising.

If by "failure," you mean "failed to be the key to selling a go-zillion devices," then, yeah. I agree about the lack of advertising (aside from the silly images circulating around, e.g., "Pray This Phone Sells" and "Check Out My Pecs And Oh Yeah There's This Phone"). The BlackBerry 10 variant of your question has spawned a thousand threads over the last two years. Bottom line: <shrug> No idea why they don't advertise.

[early2bed]

The kind of advertising campaign you are imagining would cost about $100 million. A reasonable goal for Priv sales for one quarter would be 1 million. That would cost $100 per device in advertising. The bottom line is that you can expect a $10 million ad campaign.

[David Tyler]

The kind of advertising campaign you are imagining would cost about $100 million. A reasonable goal for Priv sales for one quarter would be 1 million. That would cost $100 per device in advertising. The bottom line is that you can expect a $10 million ad campaign.

Excellent perspective -- and that's the arithmetic the board has to do. Of course, there's always the "spend a buck to get a buck" argument. I wonder how much -- say -- campaigns for recent iPhones have run? Perhaps campaigns for the early / first iPhones are more relevant.