This year has brought with it a lot of newness for BlackBerry, including a new company name as well as the launch of both a new mobile operating system and a new phone. Now it looks like BlackBerry will soon be implementing a new marketing campaign for BlackBerry 10 and the BlackBerry Z10 here in the U.S. Recent reports from Forbes and Mashable detail the "mobile takeovers," which BlackBerry CMO Frank Boulben describes as "real-time marketing," that the company will use to demonstrate its new OS to Android and iOS users.
When a user clicks on one of these mobile takeover ads, their device's display will be filled with the screen of a BlackBerry 10 device, followed by a demonstration of BB10-specific features, such as the Time Shift camera functionality. Users will then be invited to visit the BlackBerry 10 website to learn more about both BB10 and the Z10. These mobile takeover ads are slated to begin appearing during the week of March 25.
A similar type of ad will be served up to users on traditional computers, who will have their browser taken over with BlackBerry 10 features like the BlackBerry Hub. One example is an ad that'll be used on the site of The New York Times, showing a Hub that'll be filled with content from the Times's Facebook and Twitter feeds as well as its site feed. Expect to start seeing these digital takeover ads in the U.S. soon.
In addition to these takeover ads, BlackBerry is planning to introduce a a "keyboard challenge" ad that will pit a user against the BlackBerry Z10 keyboard in a typing competition. The software keyboard on the Z10 is one of the major features that BlackBerry has promoted in the past, talking up its word prediction and space inference capabilities. Users will be able to take part in the challenge, which is expected to launch later this quarter, by scanning a QR code that'll be found in both digital and print ads.
BlackBerry has already begun advertising both BlackBerry 10 and the Z10 with traditional TV commercials here in the U.S., but these new ads could help to better show off BB10's features by placing the demo directly on the device that's in the user's hands. Of course, we'll just have to wait and see whether or not these takeover ads will actually end up helping BlackBerry to get new consumers interested in the Z10, which recently landed on AT&T and will launch on T-Mobile and Verizon in the coming days. What do you make of BlackBerry's advertising plan of attack? Do you think it'll help the company to regain some of the U.S. market share that it lost in the months leading up to BlackBerry 10's launch?
