Forgot to mention this in my earlier post on the launch of BB10, but Research in Motion has now changed its name to Blackberry.
I guess this was the big branding mystery that the company was eluding to months ago.
RIM will now trade under the ticket symbol BB on the TSX.
Not really sure what this accomplishes myself. I get the notion of a fresh start and leaving the old RIM brand behind. But was RIM's problem ever the name RIM? Or rather has it always been poor marketing and a product that got behind the curve (no pun intended)?
I mean, can you imagine Apple deciding to call itself iPhone instead of Apple?
Or what if Microsoft decided to be called Windows from now on?
I don't think the name change will do any harm per se, but I don't see any benefit in it either. And it's a lot of hassle for no real benefit. The amount of paper work, legal costs and marketing overhaul that is required to get rid of the RIM name is quite a bit (far more than people might suspect). Far too much if you aren't getting any real benefit from doing so.
If I had to take a stab in the dark though, I suspect they dropped the RIM brand to be a more appealing acquisition target down the road. When the time comes, whoever buys RIM won't have to worry about absorbing the RIM (corporate) brand. Instead, they'll simply absorb the product brand, Blackberry.
But again, I don't really think that a company would or would not acquire RIM just because of it's name.
My other thought was that this was the idea of someone on the board. 'We need a clean break from the past, let's dump the name RIM and just call ourselves Blackberry. We need to be seen as a start-up, not some company from the 90s.' To which everyone probably nodded and said 'Um, sure, why not.'
In one regard this is another troubling sign that RIM thinks changing its name will help things, that if they just make a 'clean break' then they'll have a 'fresh' start.
Sorry guys, doesn't work that way. There's not a single customer out there whose reason for not buying a blackberry was that your corporate name was RIM, that was never the issue.
Now, one company who probably should have renamed themselves was BP (British Petroleum). If ever there was a time for a brand overhaul, it was after the oil spill in the gulf. In that instance I could have seen some potential benefit to the name change.
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of folks are going to have to work overtime to do all the stuff that needs to be done when a company changes its name, which is too bad since there's no real benefit in doing so.
I guess this was the big branding mystery that the company was eluding to months ago.
RIM will now trade under the ticket symbol BB on the TSX.
Not really sure what this accomplishes myself. I get the notion of a fresh start and leaving the old RIM brand behind. But was RIM's problem ever the name RIM? Or rather has it always been poor marketing and a product that got behind the curve (no pun intended)?
I mean, can you imagine Apple deciding to call itself iPhone instead of Apple?
Or what if Microsoft decided to be called Windows from now on?
I don't think the name change will do any harm per se, but I don't see any benefit in it either. And it's a lot of hassle for no real benefit. The amount of paper work, legal costs and marketing overhaul that is required to get rid of the RIM name is quite a bit (far more than people might suspect). Far too much if you aren't getting any real benefit from doing so.
If I had to take a stab in the dark though, I suspect they dropped the RIM brand to be a more appealing acquisition target down the road. When the time comes, whoever buys RIM won't have to worry about absorbing the RIM (corporate) brand. Instead, they'll simply absorb the product brand, Blackberry.
But again, I don't really think that a company would or would not acquire RIM just because of it's name.
My other thought was that this was the idea of someone on the board. 'We need a clean break from the past, let's dump the name RIM and just call ourselves Blackberry. We need to be seen as a start-up, not some company from the 90s.' To which everyone probably nodded and said 'Um, sure, why not.'
In one regard this is another troubling sign that RIM thinks changing its name will help things, that if they just make a 'clean break' then they'll have a 'fresh' start.
Sorry guys, doesn't work that way. There's not a single customer out there whose reason for not buying a blackberry was that your corporate name was RIM, that was never the issue.
Now, one company who probably should have renamed themselves was BP (British Petroleum). If ever there was a time for a brand overhaul, it was after the oil spill in the gulf. In that instance I could have seen some potential benefit to the name change.
Anyway, I'm sure a lot of folks are going to have to work overtime to do all the stuff that needs to be done when a company changes its name, which is too bad since there's no real benefit in doing so.
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