Why Lo is obsessing over the BlackBerry brand

Norm Lo is the Asia-Pacific vice-president of Canada-based Research in Motion (RIM), the maker of BlackBerry. Or 'CrackBerry' as it is affectionately known in business circles.

A brand evangelist to an almost worrying degree, Lo talks about the phone-cum-PC communication device as if he keeps one under his pillow at night and believes it will bring an end to war in his lifetime. "It's changing lives, changing cultures, the way people do business and the way we interact," he gushes with geeky enthusiasm.

But then he could be half right. Anyone who's been in a meeting with a BlackBerry owner will have witnessed the famous 'BlackBerry prayer' — the surreptitious glance downward, head bowed, to check emails (which Lo manages twice, with almost imperceptible subtlety, during this interview).

The company growth chart, which resembles a perfect smile tipped onto its side, backs him up. In the first quarter of 2004, subscriber numbers globally stood at 613,000. By December 2005, that figure had shot to 4.3 million, and eclipsed five million by March this year.

The numbers aren't broken down for Asia-Pacific, where BlackBerry entered the market in Hong Kong and Australia four years ago. But the company now works with 29 partner carriers including, most recently, NTT DoCoMo in Japan and KT Powertel in Korea, across 17 markets in the region. Ten new markets, Lo insists, will be added in the next few quarters.

Of course the interesting thing about BlackBerry is that, a la Starbucks, Prada and Google, it has managed to occupy and dominate its niche, and acquire super-brand status, with virtually no marketing to speak of.

Lo denies this, insisting that, rather than the "wasteful shotgun approach" of big-budget TV commercials, BlackBerry has used PR, viral marketing and word-of-mouth to carefully target its audience of "mobile professionals".

BlackBerry's Asian roster of PR agencies includes Hill & Knowlton in Hong Kong, Ruder Finn in China, East West in Singapore and Digiqom in India.

Back then, though, RIM had far less resources than it does now. At the last company results conference, RIM's chairman and co-CEO Jim Balsillie, announced that marketing spend would increase by eight per cent, to US$116 million — 18 per cent of global revenues ($659 million).

Lo intends to make the most of it for BlackBerry's latest assault — on the unsuspecting consumer. On an intimidating CV that includes a BSc in engineering physics and a PhD in electrical engineering, Lo has an MBA in high-tech marketing — so knows his way around BlackBerry's brand onion.

In response to slowing sales for its enterprise business segment, RIM launched the BlackBerry Pearl in the US earlier this year. The Pearl, on top of the regular email and PDA services for which the original product is known, offers consumer-friendly services such as instant messaging, a camera, maps and games. The Asia launch, Lo says, is in the pipeline.

So what are we to expect, marketing-wise, of the Pearl? "Enterprise is about greater productivity in your work life. The consumer phase will be about greater productivity in your personal life," Lo explains. "And they're not mutually exclusive, right?" he adds, with less certainty than usual.

"We're adding features to cater for the consumer segment, and part of that is the need to be fun," he continues. "And stylish. And, if I may… sexy. Which we haven't been up to now," he admits.

And what about that question advertisers have been dying to ask: 'When will BlackBerry start selling advertising space?'

"Look, we're not Google," says Lo. "It's an interesting idea, but we have to be respectful to our business partners — the carriers. It's their pipe."

Besides, it's still early days for BlackBerry in Asia. Hitting the consumer market may be a while off yet, and there's plenty of growth to be had in the business segment. "We've been wildly successful," Lo says, with a twinkle in his eye. "But we've only just started."