Marketing: REACH PR Plan for Blackberry - University Name

This report presents a REACH PR plan for Blackberry, focusing on the launch of its new secure smart-city traffic technology service. The plan begins with a situation analysis, including SWOT analysis, examining Blackberry's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the market. It highlights the importance of data privacy and security concerns among consumers. The PR plan defines specific business and PR objectives, targeting an increase in customer base and restoring Blackberry's reputation as a tech leader. It identifies key stakeholders, including law enforcement agencies, telecom companies, and application developers, and outlines key messages emphasizing the control of data privacy. The report details PR tactics, such as website launches, news releases, and social media campaigns, along with a timeline for implementation and evaluation metrics to assess campaign engagement and success.

Running head: REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
Reach PR Plan for Blackberry
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1REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
BlackBerry has built a new secure smart-city traffic technology service for providing
infrastructure for the traffic lights and vehicles for exchanging information securely
(Majumdar, 2018). It would be the first ever service to be used in the conjunction with Invest
Ottawa and it would use if for 16km road autonomous vehicle test track that resemble a
miniature. It is believed that this technology would be a dramatic turning point in the
evolution of Blackberry and would also restore its global reputation of being an innovative
tech leader.
The business objective of Blackberry is to provide its customers with the highest
quality of environmental PR consultancy. Blackberry exists for attracting and maintaining its
customers. When we adhere to this maxim, all things else will just fall into place. It is
believed that our service will surely exceed the expectations of all our boards (both customers
and stakeholders).
Business Objective
The main objectives of Blackberry for the first three years include:
a) To increase the total number of customers it served by about 20% every year by
means of referrals and superior performance
b) To increase the sales of blackberry products by 25%
c) To restore the global reputation of blackberry as an innovative technology leader
through superior performance
d) To exceed the expectations of the customers and stakeholders by 10%
e) To increase the rate of hiring of graduates from top technology schools by 20%.
Situation Analysis
Blackberry Limited is a significant firms in the mobile and technology industry. It is
also one of the leading brands in this industry. It has always maintained its prominent

2REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
position in the business market by means of carefully reviewing and analysing its present
strengths, weaknesses and the threats and opportunities present for it in the market. It is to
note that SWOT analysis is a great tool for assessing a company’s situation in the market. It
is a very interactive process that needs effective coordination among different departments
within a particular company like operations, finance, marketing, management, strategic
planning and information systems.
Being one of the leading companies in technology industry, Blackberry Inc. has many
strengths which has enabled it to thrive in the business market. All these strengths not only
assist Blackberry in protecting its market share in the prevailing markets but at the same time,
it also helping it in penetrating in the new markets. Some of its significant strengths include
its highly successful “Go To Market Strategies” for its products, its highly skilled workforce,
and its reliable suppliers of raw materials. The company provide successful training and
development opportunities for its employees and invests huge resources in their training that
results in its highly skilled and motivated workforce. Furthermore, Blackberry has built a
reliable distribution network which can reach most of its potential business market and at the
same time, the company is relatively successful at executing generated good returns and new
products on the capital expenditure by means of building new revenue streams.
However, Blackberry has several weaknesses as well. As per the recent survey and
findings, it is identified that customers seek out for the products from the company that have
a strong reputation of privacy and data security. The survey commissioned by the Blackberry
found that about 80% of the total respondents in the United States, Canada and United
Kingdom do not trust their present internet-connected devices for securing their privacy and
data (Rothman, Gupta & McEvoy, 2017). With the same, when they were asked about their
future purchases, they claimed that they were more tend to select the products or to do
businesses with the companies that had strong reputation for privacy and data security.

3REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
Blackberry is far behind many tech companies today in terms of assuring top quality data
security and privacy. With the same, it is also to mention that the profitability ratio and the
total percentage of contribution of Blackberry Inc. are less than the industry average.
Blackberry Inc. has also failed at doing efficient financial planning and there are also some
gaps identified in the range of products sold by it. Furthermore, as per the survey, about 58%
of the respondents said that they are more willing to pay more for the internet-connected
products like Alexa-speakers, the wearable and the home security products if they are assured
that their privacy and data is protected. Furthermore, when it comes to the question of
connected cars, most of the respondents stated that they would be paying more in order to
know that their vehicles have used highest security and safety software. As per Greenblatt
and Saxena (2015), the total estimated average price of transaction for the light vehicles in
the U.S was about 35,742 U.S dollars as of September 2018 and this means that about 23% of
the total respondents who said that they would pay up to 5% more for their car in order to use
secure and safe software would also spend more 1700 dollars for the dealership. 10% of the
respondents were also willing to pay about 20%.
However, there are many opportunities present for Blackberry in the current market.
Increase in the level of customer spending and the economic uptick after several years of
recession as well as the slow growing rate of this industry is a great opportunity for
Blackberry to remake its reputation in the current market. Because of this Blackberry can also
capture more new customers and at the same time, increase its share in the market. However,
the rise in the level of pay, particularly the movements like 15dollars per hour and the
increase in the prices in China could result in serious pressure on the profitability of this
company. It is a significant threat for this company. Also, the growing strengths of the local
distributors can also present threat in some of the market because the competition is paying
higher margins to the domestic or local distributors. With the same, the new environment

4REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
regulations under the Paris agreement (2016) can be a serious threat for some prevailing
product ranges.
Public Survey Questions
1. What is your name?
2. What is your age?
3. What is your gender?
4. What is the name of the province you live in?
5. What is the name of the city you live in?
6. Are you aware of the In-vehicle technology use?
7. Do you know what infrastructure-based vehicular networks is?
8. To what extent you believe blackberry would be successful in launching this new
service?
9. If you were to be the customer thinking of buy such products, would you select
blackberry for the same? If yes, why? If not, why?
10. What to do feel about this new technology? Will it make life better or worse?
PR Objectives
Through our research we can conclude that about 80% of the total respondents in the
United States, Canada and United Kingdom do not trust their present internet-connected
devices for securing their privacy and data. On behalf of Blackberry, Reach will set out for
addressing the concerns of these customers who are in opposition of the internet based
devices or infrastructure-based vehicular networks by means of highlighting the advantages
that this service will result in ultimately.

5REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
The secondary PR objective of ours will be to reach the around 80% of the Canadian
population by the beginning of 2020 and then to expand the service to U.K and U.S. as well.
The target market group would be the people belonging from the age group of 25 to 45 years.
Stakeholder Analysis
Our key stakeholders that we need to connect with for successfully achieving the PR
objectives are: the law enforcement agencies, the telecom companies, the communication
companies, the Application developers, the new entrants, the ITS equipment manufacturers,
federal, local and state government, customers, investors, employees, civil society and
educational partners.
The law enforcement agencies are basically responsible for the laws enforcement.
They can either be local, state or special police and the federal agencies like the FBI (Federal
Bureau of Investigation) or DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) (Rothberg & Stith,
2018). Our service shall address and meet all the rules and legislation of the law enforcement
agencies. They are concerned with moving the nation forward and strengthening the class of
the Canadian population. Also, the telecom companies and the application developers are also
the key stakeholders of Blackberry products. They have significant potential of affecting the
actions, policies and objectives of the company. With the same, the ITS equipment
manufacturers are the suppliers, manufacturers and the service providers by the help of whose
Blackberry can provide its customers top quality products and services. Hence, they too play
a significant role and are highly concerned with the net outcome of the company.
We want our customers to have trust on us. Blackberry is one of the oldest companies
in this industry and also, maintaining its prominent position in the market. The new secure
smart-city traffic technology service of ours would be surely benefitting our customers and
would provide them with the level of security and safety that they demand for. With the help

6REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
of this technology, people will control their own privacy. We want to develop sustainable
business which would be able to survive off its very own cash flow.
Key Messages
There are three key messages that we want our customers and stakeholders to keep in
mind. First, unlike the internet, the vehicles can be way more prominent and can be directly
addressed as compared to the Internet traffic. We just want to let our people control their own
privacy, and the level and degree, so that when they decide they want to share, it is their
explicit consent to share. With the same, they do not have home networks in the former MIP
sense. With the same, it should also be noted that the IP tunnelling needs to be avoided over
the air as much as possible. Furthermore, the third point in this regard is that of the protocol
based mobility. It is to note that the protocol based mobility that is induced by physical
mobility should be kept hidden to both the correspondent node or CN and the vehicle.
Tactics
In order to capture the hearts and minds of our customers and audience, we would be
using some PR tactics. Firstly, we would launch our very own website after assessing the
survey response from the customers. The main purpose of our website would be to provide
some virtual space to our customers where they can find all the necessary details and
resources and raise their concerns related to the product. Our customer support team shall
always be present there to guide them and to answer all their queries. Furthermore, we shall
present a news release where we would bring our customers to follow us in our social media
sites all through the journey. We will be positioning Blackberry as a trusted brand here. We
will begin a campaign of “TRY BEFORE YOU”. This campaign will be tailored towards the

7REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
supports of the infrastructure-based vehicular networks or this secure smart-city traffic
technology service and at the same time, would also inspire the ones who are against this.
Time line
Survey Website News
Release
Social
Media
Campaign
National
Event
Evaluation
April 2019 April 2019 May 2019 May 2019 August 5,
2019
August 2019
Evaluation
Engagement on Social Media
Social media metrics will help us to determine how big our audience for the PR
campaign is. It will help us to know whether the audience are engaging with our posts and
updates or not. The key indicators would include- a) positive and negative mentioning on the
social media, b) likes, shares and retweets on the channels of social media etc.
Media Impressions
As we would be using websites of digital PR, we would use media impression. It
would be the total number of time that the audience have seen our contents. If we receive a
news feed twice on our website, it would be counted as two impressions.

8REACH PR PLAN FOR BLACKBERRY
References:
Greenblatt, J. B., & Saxena, S. (2015). Autonomous taxis could greatly reduce greenhouse-
gas emissions of US light-duty vehicles. Nature Climate Change, 5(9), 860.
Majumdar, S. (2018). Leveraging Cloud Computing and Sensor-Based Devices in the
Operation and Management of Smart. Handbook of Smart Cities: Software Services
and Cyber Infrastructure, 55.
Rothberg, R. L., & Stith, K. (2018). The Opioid Crisis and Federal Criminal Prosecution. The
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 46(2), 292-313.
Rothman, B. S., Gupta, R. K., & McEvoy, M. D. (2017). Mobile technology in the
perioperative arena: rapid evolution and future disruption. Anesthesia &
Analgesia, 124(3), 807-818.