If a commercial is to fail, normally it’s because of weak creative or unsound strategy. So I have to give BlackBerry a little credit for coming up with a third way. By their choice of a musical theme, they’ve successfully broken the gall barrier.
I refer, of course, to the use of the Beatles classic All You Need Is Love. Before I go on, let us first observe a moment of silence to lament that the Beatles catalog ever fell into enemy hands, and that such commercialization of the holy writings is even possible. Thankfully, the evil-doers can only get their mitts on the publishing rights, and not the actual Beatles tracks.
But back to the commercial. By summoning the spirit of the Beatles, BlackBerry muscles its way into a most personal and sacred place. Unless your name is McCartney, it takes a lot of nerve to go there — with a bit of arrogance and miscalculation.
My emotional hurt aside, there’s another reason why BlackBerry’s approach fails. The theme of the new campaign is: “Do what you love, love what you do.” I’m sorry, but to claim love on a Beatles-esque scale, it has to be authentic. There is precious little about the company RIM or the product BlackBerry that allows them to claim this territory. Try to be something you’re not and you’re just asking for trouble.
The spot above is the only one currently available on YouTube (forgive the unclean head and tail). I’ve seen another spot on TV that features a young couple having issues and, my personal favorite, cool people dancing. This type of work is born of the belief that if you show cool young people, you will attract cool young people — even though these are the people most likely to see right through you.
As most creatives know, you don’t become cool by telling people you’re cool. Intel got ridicule, not hipness, for phony-cool dancers in its Multiplicity campaign. Dell made us squirm with young/cool buyers dancing their way out of the dell.com warehouse. Even Apple failed with its launch spot for the very first iPod, featuring a guy dancing through his apartment (dubbed “iClod” by some). Only when the Silhouettes campaign came along did iPod get the image right. Those spots captured an emotion without pandering to the target audience. They proved that you don’t have to hold up a mirror to your customers to connect with them.
Clearly BlackBerry is jealous of the love being directed at iPhone. “Hell, let’s just tell people they should love us too” isn’t really a strategy. Without any real reason to stick with BlackBerry, they’re just showing us the people they think we want to be, and asking us sing along — with a song that probably angers more people than it pleases. Good luck with that one.
