Here’s a fun story about my partner Howard, and his custom painted Blackberry. The Globe and Mail’s Mathew Ingram tells all. The job was done by Roy’s Pontiac Buick Cadillac in Cornwall. Check it out below (ignore all the top-secret iotum stuff on the board in the background… please!).
Photo by Jim Courtney
Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Ex-journalist talking here:
Boy, whomever pitched that to the Globe and Mail really did something right, and did something a lot of businesses don't take advantage of enough in their marketing arsenal:
Using a colorful, human interest story to twig the ear of the media.
Because, sometimes, it ain't about the product or the things you're doing as a company that's the really interesting thing about them. It's the dude who goes to a car dealership to have his BlackBerry pimped up that sometimes is the REAL story worth telling.
And, guess what? It's all publicity for the company in a backhanded way. Bet you that the iotum Web page is hopping with all sorts of hits right now.
Kudos.
And, of course, I meant to say "about you" and not "them". (rolls eyes).
waaaaaaaaa.. where can I pimp my berry ?
You're totally right, Zachary, those are the interesting stories. In this case, however, it wasn't really pitched so much as it fell into my lap — I just happened to see Howard's RedBerry at a Toronto blogger meetup and bugged him to tell me about it. To his credit though, he went out of his way to help with the piece, including writing up how it happened and sending me the photos.