Blackberry q5- Social media review

Hello Marketer,

Today i will blog on the social media strategy of the latest offering from the house of RIM- Blackberry q5.

Have a look at this Funnel -

I have made this model as upside down for a very simple reason. Each block represent the conversion rate, which keeps on falling. That is the number of people who are aware of the brand will always be more than the number of people who will actually buy the product.

Sales will always be less than awareness.

Now, Blackberry is/was basically popular among the urban segments.

After reaching the nadir of its value, under the leadership of Thorsten Heins, Blackberry has restructured its offerings.

The Q5 is basically being targeted at the urban youth.

And its an overt fact that one of the most favorite hangs outs of the urban youth today is the social media.

So, obviously the brand could not have neglected this space.

But, since Blackberry now plays the character of the underdog in the perception of the consumers. The company has to try harder.

So, lets analyze what have they done.

Well, this time around they have spent heavily on the marketing communication.

They have even hired a brand ambassador, Ranbir Kapoor. I personally will call it a very smart choice. He possesses all the attributes in his persona that would attract the urban youth towards this product.

Moreover, association with Ranbir Kapoor also improves the youth connect considering his latest movie, Yeh Jawani hai deewani, which has been impressively successful at the box office.

So, this step will definitely create a good amount of awareness.

But, when on Social media, the cardinal rule is 'Engagement'.

The company has definitely not neglected that aspect also.

As you can see that at the time this snapshot was taken, the company garnered over 28 million fans and over 400 thousand are talking about it.

Now, to create bustle they have used the mechanism of a contest - Power of five.

Not very creative or innovative. But, Ok. Will solve the purpose of spreading awareness and enticing engagement. How?

Well, this contest is for ten days and each day they are gifting 5 Blackberry Q5s. And I gotta appreciate them in the way they have executed the contest.

One needs to watch a short video of the Q5 and answer 5 questions on the phone. After completion, a pop up solicits option to share the or invite friends to the page.

So, they smoothly make the sales pitch as someone watches the video and lucidly communicate the features of the phone.

As you can see that there are over 5.5k likes and nearly 200 shares. Which is decent enough.

So, they have been successful in creating the engagement also. Doubt it?

Lets use the tool of Social analytic by topsy.com

I have previously posted on this tool in my post of ROI of stars and Web Analytics.

I will compare the social mentions of three phones in the same price band -

Blackberry Q5, Nokia Lumia 820 and the hot favorite Google nexus 4

Here the blue graph is of Google Nexus 4

The yellow one of Blackberry Q5

And the red one of Lumia 820.

If you look at it closely then the social mentions of Q5 have been the maximum.

The spike in Google Nexus's graph is because of the announcement that Nexus will now get upgraded with Android 4.3 \m/ But, it is again getting subsided to attain parity with Q5.

Lumia's mentions have fallen with time, since it has been quite some time that the brand was launched.

So, this graph is a proof to the fact that this strategy of organizing contests is a good way to promote the brand.

The team has successfully completed two stages of the funnel - the Awareness and the Engagement.

I can't comment on the conviction and Sales aspect. Because they involve a very profound role of the product development and specs also.

Actually, if we consider the entire offering , then branding and communication is always the cherry and icing. They always form the facade, come at the top and at the end. At the bakery the decoration can attract the consumer to try the cake, but to buy the cake the overall taste should be good.

I hope you got my point.

So, overall this social media strategy has been good for Blackberry Q5. Hope it leads to sales conversions also.

Do give any feedback or any remark.

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Take care :)