BlackBerry ads will not feature Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg
BlackBerry will not be featuring Formula One drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in its advertising, despite reportedly paying $12m a year to sponsor the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team.
Instead, BlackBerry will launch activity with Mercedes and its drivers to coincide with the start of the 2013/14 F1 season this month, but will ignore celebrity product endorsement.
Frank Boulben, chief marketing officer at BlackBerry, said :
“ads will focus on showing the BlackBerry 10 operating system in a ‘real life’ context rather than ‘paying a celebrity to say you should buy the device because I’m famous and I’m telling you to do it”
Hamilton and Rosberg will be used in ‘content-oriented projects’ along similar lines to BlackBerry’s activity with singer Alicia Keys and author Neil Gaiman.
Gaiman is currently inviting his fans to collaborate in a crowd-sourced story and illustration project as part of BlackBerry’s ‘Keep moving’ strategy.
Good move on BB’s part, they already have their celebs, as you’ve pointed out.