Obama’s BlackBerry Love Aids Its Maker If He Loses It (Update1)
By Crayton Harrison
Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama’s unpaid endorsement of the BlackBerry has provided maker Research In Motion Ltd. with a marketing boost its competitors can only dream of. Now, if the company is lucky, the president-elect will stop using it.
Obama has lobbied to keep the device over the concerns of the Secret Service. While a presidential BlackBerry would enhance the maker’s image, its encryption would be a target for spies, putting its “sterling” reputation for confidentiality at risk, analyst Roger Entner said.
“The moment it becomes known that Barack Obama uses his BlackBerry, you know that a significant share of Russia’s signal intelligence and China’s signal intelligence and cyber intelligence budgets will be targeted to break it,” said Entner, an analyst with market researcher Nielsen Co. in Boston.
Obama isn’t alone in craving a gadget to link him to the outside world. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lost her access to such devices when she took the job, and probably will get an iPhone after she steps down Jan. 20, said Sean McCormack, her spokesman.
“I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry. They’re going to pry it out of my hands,” Obama said in a broadcast last week televised by CNBC. “You are interacting with people who are outside of the White House in a meaningful way.”
David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, said today he wasn’t sure whether Obama would be allowed to keep his BlackBerry after the inauguration. Nevertheless, he’ll find a way to keep e-mailing, he said.
“He does live his life through technology,” Plouffe said today following a speech in Toronto.
Clinton’s McDonald’s
Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman for Waterloo, Ontario-based Research In Motion, didn’t respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg News.
Obama’s fight to keep the device raises its profile as Research In Motion seeks to expand beyond its base of professionals like lawyers and bankers. Consumers have gravitated to handsets such as Apple Inc.’s iPhone as they seek devices that can surf the Web and download video, a market that probably will grow 8.9 percent this year, according to research firm IDC.
Obama’s affinity for the BlackBerry produced free publicity reminiscent of the visits former President Bill Clinton made to McDonald’s Corp. restaurants in his 1992 campaign, Entner said. Jelly Belly Candy Co. told the New York Times this year that its sales doubled in 1980, when then-President-elect Ronald Reagan was a fan.
Brand Power
Obama would probably collect fees of more than $100 million a year if he were able to make product endorsements right now, said Laura Ries, president of marketing strategy firm Ries & Ries Inc. in Roswell, Georgia. That would top the marketing take of Tiger Woods, she said. The pro golfer was ranked North America’s most marketable athlete in a SportsBusiness Daily poll last year.
“It’s worth it to go to reasonable lengths to allow him to keep it,” said Ries, co-author of four books on brands and marketing. “How often does a president get photographed? Every five minutes. The potential of him being in a photo using a BlackBerry in all likelihood is incredibly high. That would be very powerful.”
If Obama prevails, he could probably legally keep his e-mails private for as long as 12 years after he leaves office by citing the Presidential Records Act, said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
BlackBerry Hack
“The only real implication is whether or not the BlackBerry could be hacked,” Blanton said. Archivists would find the e-mail useful because it could be saved on servers and harvested later by historians and journalists, he said.
U.S. engineers might be able to build a BlackBerry that uses a higher level of encryption than Research In Motion and its wireless carriers do, giving Obama wireless e-mail, Entner said. Without a special version, Obama can’t have confidence his messages are private, he said.
“If Obama uses a vanilla BlackBerry, he should use it with the assumption that the world will read it,” Entner said. “His counterparts in the capitals of several countries will read it.”
McAfee Inc., the world’s second-biggest security software maker, has detected few attacks on Research In Motion’s security system, said Jan Volzke, head of marketing for McAfee’s mobile security unit. The BlackBerry network is unique and fully under the company’s control, helping to ward off incursions, he said.
The likelihood that Obama will have to give up his BlackBerry for security reasons won’t give consumers second thoughts about whether Research In Motion and wireless carriers can protect their own e-mail, said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in Evanston, Illinois. Consumers understand that a president’s security requirements are higher than most, he said.
“You would think that in some way the president could use what has become a form of everyday communication,” Calkins said. “I hope he can.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Crayton Harrison in Dallas at tharrison5@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: January 13, 2009 15:16 EST |
