BlackBerry Sends Out Another 'We're Not Dead' Notice, This Time Homing In On Enterprise
BlackBerry got a lot of chaff from the press for issuing full-page print newspaper ads effectively reminding customers they're not dead, likely to counter rumors to the contrary in a lot of headlines and article feature art.
Context & Ripple Effects
Four months after BlackBerry publicly put itself up for sale in its search for a buyer, the company is back with a different message: it is not dead, and it is an enterprise company. The full-page print ads are a defensive communications move against a press cycle that keeps illustrating stories about the firm with coffin imagery, and the mockery they drew across outlets from The Verge to Ars Technica shows how hard that framing is to shake.
There is history here: speculation about the company's fate goes back years, including 2010 chatter about Microsoft buying RIM. What has changed by December 2013 is that the acquisition exit did not materialize, so management is left arguing continuity directly to customers instead of negotiating continuity through a deal.
First-order effects
- BlackBerry's enterprise customers — the audience the ads explicitly target — are being asked to read the campaign as reassurance that support, security services, and device commitments remain intact despite the abandoned sale process.
- The press backlash means the ad spend is doing double duty: every outlet mocking the 'we're not dead' notice is nonetheless repeating BlackBerry's chosen message of enterprise focus to exactly the business readership it wants.
Second-order effects
- Having failed to find a buyer in August, BlackBerry now has to fund its own stabilization, which pushes cost discipline questions — layoffs, profitability timelines — to the center of how enterprise buyers judge whether its promises are credible.
- Rivals selling mobile-device management and secure enterprise mobility gain a sales pitch by default: every 'BlackBerry is dying' headline is free competitive ammunition in procurement conversations BlackBerry's ads must then counter.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the structural endpoint is a former handset leader shrinking its identity down to its defensible enterprise assets, with brand-defense advertising marking the transition from growth story to managed-decline turnaround.
- The episode is a data point on how distressed tech companies manage perception risk once acquisition exits fail: paid reassurance campaigns become a standard tool, but their effectiveness depends on follow-through the ads themselves cannot supply.
The trend: Distressed hardware vendors that cannot sell themselves are pivoting their public identity toward enterprise services, using defensive advertising to buy credibility while the underlying business shrinks to what customers will still pay for.