In late January RIM replaced its co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis with COO Thorsten Heins. As a now-former Blackberry user (I just switched to the HTC Rezound) this news certainly got my attention.

I expected to hear Heins address all the concerns of Blackberry users like frequent “white screen of death” issues, latency and even my chief concern (since I am becoming kind of a nut about this stuff), Blackberry models having some of the highest radiation in the industry.

Instead, the headlines were that Heins believes no major changes were necessary, or as Bloomberg Businessweek put it, RIM is “Staying is the Course”.

Bloomberg’s Peter Burrows and Hugo Miller’s article essentially skewered Heins for this – and used a Blackberry buried in a grave to depict where they really thought RIM is headed. This is about the worst image a PR person wants to see, yet it was no great shock because Heins didn’t say the right things in his interviews. This is a shame because it was his golden opportunity to do so. A new CEO’s first public outing is the chance for him/her to state goals, address challenges, explain the way forward and, ideally, re-shape people’s perceptions.

Had I been on the public relations team counseling Heins I would have told him to accentuate the positive while acknowledging challenges. I’d have counseled him to state the big ones, which would give him a chance to explain the steps the company is taking to tackle problems. Everyone knows RIM has serious issues. It is ridiculous to try to hide them. The trick is to re-frame the discussion while addressing how problems are going to be fixed.

The old adage “honesty is the best policy” may sound a bit old fashioned, but when you are talking about a company like RIM, and the state it’s in, they would have been better served by being open and honest. Unfortunately it is too late for Heins’ public introduction.

Perhaps moving forward RIM will learn from its mistakes and carve out a better public relations outcome. To change perceptions they must publicly acknowledge the obvious – significant products are necessary not only to stave off Apple, but also to stay relevant in the mobile marketplace.

Maybe they’d even win back former customers like me.

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Technorati Tags: RIM Blackberry Public Relations PR

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Some people watch the Super Bowl for the game; others watch it for the commercials. In fact, the commercials are one of the biggest draws of the Super Bowl, especially for the non-sports fanatics of the world. The hype surrounding the 10 second teaser of the Ferris Bueller inspired Honda commercial has been phenomenal. TV-goers immediately took to Twitter to dissect, speculate and rate the clip. It spread like wildfire over the Internet and through social media networks.

Realizing how social media has changed the way fans enjoy the game, Mullen, Radian6 and Boston.com are sponsoring Brand Bowl 2012, a social media event that will analyze the Twitter commentary and rate the most popular and disastrous Super Bowl commercials. The virtual event at BrandBowl2012.com will feature an up-to-the-minute stream of tweets about Super Bowl commercials to determine which brands are the most and least effective. The brands will be ranked based on volume (who has the most/least chatter) and sentiment (who has the most/least positive and negative comments).

Were you always picked last in dodgeball, baseball or soccer? Don’t worry about it. You don’t need to be recruited to play in the Brand Bowl. The power to rank commercials you liked best, or least, is in the palm of your hand – or really, fingertips!

For those of you who plan to tweet your opinions about this year’s Super Bowl commercials, include the hashtag #brandbowl or reference a specific commercial in your tweet. The tweets will be streamed live on Boston.com during the game.

Brands are beginning to realize the influence the armchair advertising critics of the world have in the social media realm. The savviest brands are recognizing the power of social media and are releasing their commercials before the Super Bowl to build buzz online, and are orchestrating large-scale social media campaigns to maximize the impact of their multi-million dollar investments.

Will you be participating in Brand Bowl 2012?

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Technorati Tags: Advertising, Boston.com, Brand Bowl, brands, commercials, Giants, Patriots, Super Bowl, Twitter

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If you wanted to catch a TV show or movie for free, Megaupload was the place to go. If you wanted to view something that was on a long time ago (Rambo movies in my case, for example), somewhere on the Megaupload website someone had uploaded that file for you. Others used it for other purposes, including file storage and home video and photo uploading, for example.

Those days are now over. The US government has shut down the website. The homepage is gone, replaced with a notice saying “This domain name associated with the website megaupload.com has been seized pursuant to an order issued by a U.S. District court.”

The Associated Press is reporting the government wants to begin deleting data stored on the site as early as Thursday. What does this mean for users? This will not be the last attempt by the government to shut down file-sharing sites. Those of us older than 20 recall Napster and the RIAA’s filing of lawsuits against every single person in America who downloaded one too many songs from the site. More recently, Limewire was taken down by the Feds. Owners of file-sharing sites will have to take care to either not store consumers’ data, or else will need to change business practices.

Consumers should keep in mind the government will likely come after other sides which give customers free data, such as alluc.org and crackle.com. My personal recommendation is to not share credit card info or personal data on these sites. Not only for security reasons, but if the government goes after those sites as well, they will have a list of who was using the site and for how much. Who knows, depending on what you did, the government could be after you next.

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