RIM creates 4 cartoon characters to spread the “Be Bold” message

You’ve got to hand it to RIM. The company has been through the wringer over the past year. Some loyal users have departed to other manufacturers, their stock price has fallen (currently at $17.02/share), and recently their co-CEOs stepped down. With all this said, RIM has no debt and plenty of cash in the bank, over 75 million subscribers and a new CEO who hopefully has a solid plan. It’s known that the company wants to attract a new consumer-focused audience. Thorsten Heins, RIM’s new CEO, plans to hire a new CMO and it seems like the new marketing efforts have already started. The “Be Bold” initiative kicked off on New Years, but the cartoon characters are new. There are four of them:

GoGo Girl, The Achiever: “Saving the day with a brilliant strategy”
Justin Steele, The Advocate: “Always ready to stick up for his friends”
Trudy Foreal, The Authentic: “Not afraid to call it as she sees it”.
Max Stone, The Adventurer: “Able to jump out of a plane…” (would have been good for those two drunk RIM employees)

RIM put together an infograph to display these new characters… they bring some new personality to their brand, but what is really needed are fresh products. Bring on the new PlayBook OS and the new BlackBerry 10 devices.

Update – RIM just posted this update on their blog regarding the infographic:
“UPDATE: We’ve noticed The BeBold Team has received a lot of attention over the last couple of days, and wanted to clarify – this infographic is just intended to be a bit of fun. On New Year’s Eve, we asked BlackBerry Twitter followers and their friends to submit their resolutions on how they plan to Be Bold in 2012. More than 35,000 resolutions streamed across Twitter®, Facebook®, and giant billboards in Times Square. As we looked at the resolutions and the data, majority patterns and categories emerged. We decided to organize the data and share it in a fun way, and the result is the infographic. This is not a new ad campaign.”

Source: RIM