Richard Bliss Blog

Verizon getting it wrong, Again!

I've already mentioned that I watch TV to watch commercials. You can tell a lot about the decision-making that is going on at a company by the kinds of ads they choose to run. Verizon continues to attack their own brand with poor advertising.

This time it is with their partnership with RIM. The ad goes like this:

Two guys at lunch talking about their new BlackBerries. One guy goes on and on about the features while the other says nothing. The quiet one has to admit that he doesn't have those features because he doesn't have Verizon. His BlackBerry is in Paperweight mode, and the guy drops it onto a pile of papers.

What are they thinking over there?

Who is the competition here? Sprint? T-Mobile? AT&T?

Actually the competition is really Apple. What Verizon is attempting to do but failing, is to convince you your BlackBerry is better on their network, but what they actually are reinforcing is that BlackBerry can be a paperweight, completely useless.

But wait, the execs at Verizon say. "We talked about all those cool features, that is what people will remember" No, they won't. No one will remember a single feature that was rattled off. They will only remember the "punch line", BlackBerry is a Paperweight. Don't buy a BlackBerry.

Who wins? Apple, because no one would ever say that an iPhone could ever be used as a paperweight. And if Apple wins, then Verizon loses because they switch to AT&T to get the cool iPhone and not the paperweight BlackBerry.

Please Verizon, stop trying to help RIM, you are killing them with your ads.

Sticks and Stones Will Break My Bones But Words Can Kill My Product

Stick and Stones will break my bones
But words will never hurt me

This is a children's rhyme that we all remember taught to us by our mothers. It was a defense against the terrible mean things kids say to each other.

We all know it isn't true. Words, much more than sticks and stones, truly have the power to hurt us. and to keep hurting us over the years.

My blog has consistently talked about owning a word and the importance of owning the right word.

Sometimes NOT owning a word, or not being associated with a word can be just as devastating.

GroupWise and BlackBerry

Back in 2001 when I joined Novell to head up GroupWise marketing, I had a problem. Actually I had a very large number of problems, but I'm only going to focus on one of them for this blog posting.

The problem was that Research in Motion, the makers of BlackBerry Smartphones, was extremely popular with a large segment of my customer base, namely law firms. Lawyers were the first large segment of users to adopt the BlackBerry phone and to begin spreading its popularity.

But, word on the street was that GroupWise didn't work with BlackBerry. Law firms began dumping GroupWise for Exchange because they perceived that they needed Exchange to get their phones to work.

The truth and perception are often at odds with each other. In this case, there was a problem with the wording.

In 2001, RIM had a service called BlackBerry. It was a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and the BlackBerry Network. The phones and devices themselves were not called BlackBerrys, they were called RIM devices.

GroupWise worked fine with RIM devices. Using a myriad of 3rd party applications, almost any RIM device could be linked up with GroupWise to provide a solution.

The problem was with the word, BlackBerry. GroupWise didn't work with BlackBerry, since BlackBerry was a service and not a thing. GroupWise worked with RIM.

I found myself in a dilemma on how to promote the use of a RIM devices with GroupWise to staunch the attrition of customers moving away from GroupWise.

One partner came forward with a solution that I could talk about. Consilient had developed a connector that allowed a BlackBerry Enterprise Server and Service to work with GroupWise. I could now claim that through Consilient, GroupWise worked with BlackBerry.

Not only could I claim it, I did claim it. I began announcing that BlackBerry was now available. I had to promote Consilient but it worked.

The problem was that Consilient made it work by wrapping their solution around a Microsoft Exchange Server. That meant a GroupWise customer would need to install Exchange to get their BlackBerry to work with GroupWise.

That was not a popular idea. I took a lot of heat for that decision. A decision that still rankles those that remember it.

But I stand by my decision. Consilient didn't sell that much product to my customers. Once someone began seriously investigating, they realized that Consilient wouldn't work for them, but they also realized that the many other 3rd party partners at the time would work just fine.

I opened up the conversation so that the word BlackBerry could be associated with GroupWise, thereby increasing the exposure of ALL of my partners and keeping the opposition for depositioning my product.

Over time, RIM, realizing that BlackBerry was a more powerful brand than RIM, changed all their device names to be called BlackBerry Smartphones. Once they did that, the problem went away. Now, any solution that allowed a BlackBerry phone to connect to GroupWise didn't have to be worded differently.


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GroupWise and iPhone