Exclusive | Activations help create positive impact on the brand: Blackberry's Thomas

Brand consultants and marketers observe that over the years, ‘brand engagement’ has grown to become a crucial ingredient in the marketing plan of brands. Understanding this, many brands have performed permutations and combinations of brand engagement activities like special kiosk at strategic locations, tempting offers, associating with films and TV, and lately, with renowned college festivals across top cities. With an aim to leverage this new-found brand engagement opportunity, smart-phone company Blackberry had joined hands with Mumbai’s St. Xavier College’s annual festival – Malhar 2014.

Adgully caught up with Amar Thomas, Country Marketing manager, BlackBerry India to know more on this association and the activities revolving around it.

Thomas informs that BlackBerry has been successfully associated with Malhar for three consecutive years now. He states that both these brands – Blackberry and Malhar have a key attribute in common i.e. they both are cult brands; both the brands want to reach out and engage with the youth in new stimulating and interesting ways. “Therefore it was only natural for BlackBerry to partner with the college fest.  By associating with college festivals like Malhar, BlackBerry‘s aim is to reach out and engage with youngsters who love technology and want to be connected with their friends, family and larger community, even while on the move. The third year of association has proved to be fruitful and has shown immense increase in the popularity of BlackBerry and its user-friendly services among the youth. This year, like the previous ones, the brand executed some very interesting activities on campus”, he added.

Some of the on-campus activities he citied to us were:
• For starters, BlackBerry users were pleasantly surprised by a VIP entrance with no queue to the fest. Experience zones were set-up where people can visit to experience the power of BlackBerry and BBM.
• Stilt walkers walked at 10 feet height with a Z3 body. Collegians who reached out to hi-five the stilt walker got MSD micro cards. This highlighted the 5-inch aspect of the newly launched BB Z3
• A box was set up in the shape of handset. Students were asked to try opening the box with a key (to be picked from a bunch of keys). Each participant got only two chances. The rationale behind executing such an activity was to highlight the security aspect of our devices.
• We also set up a 7ft tall Z3 jigsaw puzzle at the venue which the students had to put together in a team within a limited time. Once the students had built the puzzle above an average height, they experienced tremendous excitement to search for puzzle pieces and put them together at that height.
• Students were asked to type a Hollywood dialogue using BlackBerry Z3 device with the fastest typer being declared the winner. Simultaneously, they were also asked to try and basket 30 branded balls (marked emails, attachment, picture, video etc) within a given time limit, in a particular box. Students to basket maximum balls were declared the winners. This was done to highlight the Dropbox integration in BBM that allows users to transfer huge size files. Another fun activity involving team work was arranged. In this activity, a host present at the activity area would shout out a number. People holding that number would join together to form a group. This highlights the large groups that can be formed on BBM with friends, family and workmates.

“Most of these activities were designed in a manner to highlight the USP and speciality of BlackBerry products and services”, Thomas said.

While Blackberry has usually held a corporate image, it did undergo a change of sorts over the last couple of years turning the spot to young BB lovers. Speaking of how these types associations become an extension to this philosophy, Thomas said, “BlackBerry as an iconic brand is used by leaders, corporates, celebrities, governments and youth alike. Instead of shifting focus, the brand’s marketing strategy has evolved in accordance with the growing maturity of the Indian smartphone market. Today, India stands at a threshold with more than half of the population being in the age group of 15- 30 years. These young people are major consumers of products and varied services available out there. Given the market dynamics, the growth of the smartphone category in India will be driven by the youth in coming years. Associating with massive youth fests like Malhar therefore seems just natural. This opens up new avenues for BlackBerry, while it continues to be a dominant player in the enterprise sector”.

In the recent past, Blackberry has associated with many corporate events like CEO’s Got Talent, Adtech 2014 etc. Sharing his thoughts on how does he see these associations as adding value to ‘brand BlackBerry’, Thomas said, “The purpose of associating with events and fests like these is to drive pertinent conversations with the target audiences. BTL activations Malhar helps the brand to engage with its audiences and not merely give out information. Through this partnership we have been able to drive interesting conversations and stay relevant in the minds of our customers. The impact on our brand therefore has been tremendously positive”.

He firmly states that the aim was to connect with the youth and make them experience BlackBerry services first hand; making them personally witness these services strengthens the brand’s value. “Even if it doesn’t result in immediate sales, such activations help create a positive impact on the brand”, he said.

Speaking of marketing this association with Malhar, Thomas stated, “Blackberry has been active with the association on Facebook. While sharing updates about the event the brand shared a video about how team Malhar used Blackberry devices effectively to plan and coordinate for the mega event. The brand’s Facebook page gave a glimpse of the entire three day event which kicked off last month. On Twitter the hashtag, #BlackBerry @Malhar went viral because of the engagement generated by the brand on the campus”.

Thomas mentions that the response for this kind of association has been very encouraging from the organizers. “For a brand such as BlackBerry, marketing initiatives such as these help strengthen our presence and ensure that it stays in sync with the target audience. For these reasons, we will continue to associate ourselves with such audience engagement activities in the future as well”, he concluded. 

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