[s7khan]

I'm a wedding photographer, and an engineering student. Two widely different fields, but it's also opened me up to very different people. Skip the next two paragraphs if you just want to read the point of this post.

Last month I shot a wedding in Mexico. I got to spend an entire week with the bride/groom and the wedding party. Through a small quirk in the plans, I shot the wedding over two days. However, I did take pictures during those other days. And here is how the Playbook helped me a lot.

I had everything set up in my room to edit the pictures as soon as I checked in. Every night, I'd select my favourite 40-80 pictures of the day, do some light edits and upload them on to my Playbook. The Playbook is small enough to fit into my pocket, and once I met up with the wedding group, they were all thrilled with the pictures, and fascinated with the Playbook. My primary goal with the device was to provide an extra service (instant viewing of the day's pictures), but I did happen to promote the tablet.

And with a few quick swipes and gestures, everyone was hooked on the Playbook. Three of them after the Mexico trip went out and bought one. A fair few of them were BlackBerry users, so after showing them Bridge, they loved it. Unfortunately, OS 2.0 wasn't out yet, so I couldn't show them the remote app.

This is not a first. Because of me, I know 5 other people who have bought a Playbook, that's 8 in total from one person. All of them knew about the existence of the Playbook, and nothing more. Those silly "Flash" commercials did nothing to truly describe how amazing this device is. When I was in Philadelphia, I saw a BlackBerry store in the airport, and had to stop despite being slightly cramped for time. While it was a neat, visually appealing store, for someone who is unfamiliar with the devices BlackBerry has to offer, there was no one to explain it to them. Just a woman behind the counter. It's a shame that RIM finally has products that stand strong (Including the BB 7 phones), and even in their own stores, they don't seem to care about sharing that experience.

I hate to use the Apple example, but they have it right a lot. They had an entire campaign just on iBooks, and on Facetime, and on certain individual features. Apart from the initial Playbook ads, I've seen nothing for the tablet. And for the BlackBerry, I've seen way too many campaigns on BBM and really nothing else. I showed the one BlackBerry released a week ago about the Bridge to a couple of non-BlackBerry owning friends, and they just seemed confused. After I told them what the remote Bridge was about, it was the coolest thing ever for them.

Apple has iPhone. People will buy that phone because many others have it, so the logical conclusion is that it should be a good device.

Google has Android. Where it pushes power, and massive screens and comes attached with the Google name.

BlackBerry has the experience, which granted has sucked for devices from the 9800 and down, but it's so much more intuitive now. Market it! Be ballsy with your ad campaigns RIM! Stop being boring, take your own advice and be bold for once.

[anon(4086706)]

I'm glad that Thorstein Heins did take notice of this. Though at this point, he might do something a bit more than just marketing.