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And Finally Brands & Merch Business News
BlackBerry turned down Bieber brand ambassador offer
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 9 December 2013
A former employee of the BlackBerry company has revealed that, amongst the many mistakes the company has made in recent years, one was passing up signing an early career Justin Bieber as a brand ambassador for relatively little money.
Amongst many insights from former and current staffers at BlackBerry Ltd (or what was Research In Motion until relatively recently) in this sizeable Businessweek feature, Vincent Washington, who was Senior Business Development Manager from 2001 to 2011, explains: “One thing we missed out on was that Justin Bieber wanted to rep BlackBerry. He said, ‘Give me $200,000 and 20 devices, and I’m your brand ambassador’, basically”.
The offer seemingly came reasonably early in Bieber’s ascension, though far enough in that he was hawking his face out to companies, so presumably his fanbase was already sizable and obsessive. And, as both he and RIM are Canadian, the partnership deal seemed to make sense.
So far so good, but Washington continues: “We pitched that to marketing: Here’s a Canadian kid, he grew up here, all the teeny-boppers will love that. They basically threw us out of the room. They said, ‘This kid is a fad. He’s not going to last’. I said at the meeting: ‘This kid might outlive RIM’. Everyone laughed”.
Still, at least the company was quick to snap up “iPhone junky” Alicia Keys earlier this year. Though she was unable to halt the decline in BlackBerry’s popularity, something illustrated by her own mobile device of choice.
