RIM Marketing Head’s Secret Weapon: Current BlackBerry Fans

When troubled Research In Motion introduces its much delayed BlackBerry 10 line of smartphones next year, it probably will not have the marketing budget that Apple devotes to the iPhone.

Frank BoulbenFrank Boulben

But Frank Boulben, who recently joined RIM as its chief marketing officer, said he hoped that the 78 million people now using BlackBerrys would be something of a secret weapon behind the new line of products on which RIM is staking its future.

In an interview this week, Mr. Boulben said he planned to exploit the “huge capital of sympathy” that remains among current BlackBerry owners to help convince others about the wonders of the new phones. He plans to introduce current BlackBerry users to the new phones through online videos and later through access to the devices themselves, “and then have them, in effect, do the marketing through a word-of-mouth approach.”

He added that the company would “amplify” that crusade through its own marketing efforts, which he said were still being developed.

RIM will not initially release a BlackBerry 10 phone that has a physical keyboard, even though that feature has kept many users loyal to the brand. But Mr. Boulben said that the touch-screen model that will arrive first “won’t be an iPhone look-alike; it won’t be an Android look-alike.”

Its key novelty, Mr. Boulben said, will be its user interface, which RIM sometimes refers to as “Cascades.” Rather than returning to a home page to switch between apps, as is the case with Android phones or iPhones, BlackBerry 10 phones will run and display data from different apps running simultaneously, he said. Apps will also exchange information so that, as an example, a name in an appointment will be linked to recent e-mails from that person as well as her LinkedIn profile.

But Microsoft already offers some of that data and apps integration in its Windows Phone 7. Despite praise for Microsoft’s innovations from several reviewers, Windows Phone 7 handsets have failed to find a major following in the United States, the market where RIM’s decline has been most pronounced and where its comeback is most critical.

Like Thorsten Heins, a German who became RIM’s chief executive in January, Mr. Boulben is among several Europeans who are guiding the Canadian company’s turnaround. Born and educated in France, Mr. Boulben worked for two wireless carriers based there, S.F.R. and Orange, as well as Vodafone, the large British carrier that is Verizon’s partner in Verizon Wireless.

If he participates in events surrounding the release of BlackBerry 10, Mr. Boulben will bring a different tone to the proceedings. While he speaks perfect English, his approach to the language is more French technocrat in style than conventional, amped-up North American marketing manager.