NBA Christmas Special Opening Night Will Be Sponsored By BlackBerry

One of the areas in which BlackBerry has been struggling severely is marketing its products. BlackBerry 7 smartphones have completely gone under the radar for many, as commercials, posters and general advertisement has been completely lacking in the U.S. markets, including even carrier stores. One of the only BlackBerry commercials we've seen in the U.S. has been this Torch 2 9810 commercial from AT&T the day after the release of the Bold 9900. All of us die hard BlackBerry fans have been extremely disappointed, to say the least, about the lack of carrier cooperation towards advertisement for our new devices.

With the last conference call getting many worried about the future of BlackBerry, a $100 million advertising budget was promised for Q4 of 2011 in order to help boost sales of both BlackBerry devices and PlayBook tablets. I know, I'm thinking the same thing, this should've been done back in Q3 or Q2 instead but at least something is getting done.

Many have, rightfully, wondered where this huge advertising budget would go. If you think about it for example, most movie advertising campaigns are, on average, around $50-$60 million. If RIM is going to be investing almost double the average in one quarter it should suggest that we will be bombarded with BlackBerry "stuff" over the next couple of months.

One of the first avenues in which RIM is inserting the BlackBerry brand is the NBA. The basketball season will officially get started this Sunday, December 25th with a series of extremely highly anticipated games throughout the day. The 3 main ones (ORL vs OKC, MIA vs DAL, and LA vs CHI) will be sponsored by BlackBerry. There have been a couple of commercials being aired which show off the logo a little better and we're hoping to see an increase in these as the day gets closer.

This to me is extremely exciting. I personally have never been a fan of BlackBerry sponsoring concerts or obscure events that most people will never watch. This ends up being completely the opposite as these games are going to be extremely popular in the U.S. specially. As a die-hard Miami Heat fan I will be glued to the TV on Sunday rooting for the Heat and waiting to see how much BlackBerry "stuff" we see all around.