Going through the early morning news I saw this on Google Finance, not I site I have seen before but they are quoting a report from Deutsche Bank that kind of illustrates what we have heard anecdotal stories here in this forum about the carrier stores:
http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/02/res...ng-in-on-bb10/
I've been saying this for quite a while...if BB relies on retail sales people to sell their product, then they are 100% dead. Not 98% or 99%...100%...bank on it. BB needs to push marketing on TV and print to make people head to the store to BUY the phone, not ask questions about the phone.
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There must be some threads on here already about advertising that is going on.
Check them to see how it is ramping up in the areas where the device is released
good thing they had a blackberry employee showing everything at rogers today.....
Reading the threads hear and articles in the paper, it sounds like sales reps are just starting to get excited. This is how a gorilla marketing campaign starts; for months you build interest and excitement with early adopters using video's, social media and sites like Crackberry. The thing about early adopters is that even though they are the minority, they are highly influential. That is why if you currently take a poll, as was done in the article above, most sales reps are not pushing BB10, yet. Early adopters, whether sales reps or customers are not just pushing it, they are excited and that excitement is spreading like wildfire. Of course if you ask most mainstream customers and sales reps, they are still under the impression that BlackBerry is going under. But you have to look at the anatomy of this marketing campaign to realize that this launch is firing on all cylinders.
Anatomy of the BB10 Marketing Campaign:
1) 6 months pre-launch to launch day - Build excitement with existing users which then starts spilling over to early adopters on other platforms. The added bonus is that this is cheap to do, which aligns well with the fact that you are still mainly selling cheap curves in emerging markets, so there is no advertising budget.
2) Starting launch day - You show the world that with no mainstream marketing (only gorilla tactics) the product is already a hit, already "selling out" already selling on eBay for $1500. This provides the proof point for non-believers to investigate the product and re-examine their assumptions about the supposed failure of BlackBerry. What will these people do? They will do online research, but more importantly they will talk to the diehard BlackBerry guy that they've been making fun of for 2 years or the early adopter who has owned the iPhone, Galaxy and Nexus already and knows exactly why BlackBerry is better for them (again due to the gorilla marketing)
3) Begin an all out marketing blitz for the maintream using money from new expensive device sales. Reinforced by early adopters and influential social media types.
Mark my words, the poll of uniformed sales reps done above will be vastly more favourable to BlackBerry even one month from now. Nothing is as powerful as word of mouth.
The sales people I talked to were very knowledgeable about the z10
This study was done in the UK and the results could have been taken from the US. I agree with 100%. You cannot trust the carriers and the sales reps. Sure would be nice to see some "secret shopper" reports on sales reps. I wonder if Blackberry does such a thing to keep carriers honest?
The Fido store where i picked up mine this morning didn't even have any advertising in regards to it. Not a single picture of the phone, BB's logo or the name Z10.
I would expect BB to have commitments from carriers to go through on these things, or face penalties.
You have a gift my friend...love reading your stuff!! This got my attention.
No hard feelings but not all sales persons are well educated about the products they're selling. As everyone else(read iSheep, Droid fan, WP dude etc) they promote one product which in this case is totally not good for BB.
The one thing I think needs to be taken care of quickly is the BIS stuff - even here, plenty of people seem to be confused about what works, what doesn't, what's required what isn't - there are reports of people being sold Blackberry bolt-ons because the sales reps thinks they are needed. I'm surprised that blackberry don't have an FAQ page at least (maybe they do and I can't find it?)
They'd have to give the employees incentive to promote the Z10.
Good analysis - The bold bit we can actually track to an extent.
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(if anyone is wondering why I selected those terms, those are search combinations google is suggesting are the most popular).
For what BB spent on the Super Bowl they could have given most of the major Carrier Corporate Store Reps a free Z10 a month before release and let them get excited about selling them.
Of course that assumes it wouldn't have the opposite effect.
