This email that T-Mobile marketing sent to convert BlackBerry users to iPhone seems to be backfiring in a huge way. Today BlackBerry CEO John Chen got in front of the issue with his own “Response to T-Mobile’s Anti-BlackBerry Campaign.” He goes on to thank Team BlackBerry for standing with the company during the turn around and not putting up with T-Mobile’s antics. He goes on to slam T-Mobile as a long time partner who did not communicate before or after the ill conceived marketing promotion. Here is what John Chen had to say:
Late last week, T-Mobile emailed an offer targeting BlackBerry users on its network asking them to switch their BlackBerry devices to a competitor’s smartphone. As we were never told of their plans in advance, I can only guess that T-Mobile thought its “great offer for BlackBerry customers” would be well received. T-Mobile could not have been more wrong.
I want to thank our loyal customers for your commitment to BlackBerry. By expressing your outrage directly to T-Mobile through tweets, calls and comments in the media and on blog posts, you sent a powerful message that T-Mobile could not ignore. Your partnership with our brand is appreciated by all of us at BlackBerry, and draws a sharp contrast with the behavior of our longtime business partner.
I can assure you that we are outraged too. What puzzles me more is that T-Mobile did not speak with us before or after they launched this clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing promotion.
To the BlackBerry user community, I want to extend our deepest gratitude. Your passion motivates us every day as we navigate our turnaround. And for our loyal customers on the T-Mobile network, know that we have an offer in the works designed especially for you. Watch this space for an update very soon.
Finally, to T-Mobile, I would like to remind you that our long-standing partnership was once productive and profitable for both BlackBerry and T-Mobile. I hope we can find a way forward that allows us to serve our shared customers once again. Notwithstanding the current challenge, we remain very excited about BlackBerry’s future.
Its nice to see a CEO who stands up for his fans and company.
Derrick Not Registered
Posted: February 19, 2014 at 9:11 AM EST
That’s a nice response, but I’ll save my excitement until I see more responses like this to negative press. Remember, Thorsten also responded once to some negative press and “the fans went wild,” but that was the end of it. The defense of the company did not continue. One thing Chen failed to do here was at least suggest to the legacy BB customers to upgrade to BB10 instead of an iPhone, even if they have to change carriers.
Let’s just see how long Chen keeps this up. Who’s going to want to partner with or invest in a company whose leader let’s the press and other companies continuously take cheap shots at it, but the leader almost never defends it? This was a good start, but let’s just see…