When BlackBerry ruled the serious world

This started with no brief, no RFP and no invitation. I identified an opportunity, developed a point of view and reached out directly, turning a speculative email into an initial project that grew into a multi-year client relationship for the agency.

Back in 2007, BlackBerry felt untouchable. The Bold was about to launch, Obama was practically inseparable from his device, and every financial district from London to Washington was awash with people striding around with a BlackBerry clipped proudly to their belt. The iPhone had technically arrived but was still somewhere between novelty and nuisance, and no one in a sober suit was suggesting it would rewrite the rules. BlackBerry was the tool for grown-ups, the machine you used if you had somewhere important to be.

At the time, I was working for Jack Morton Worldwide in Boston, juggling current clients while quietly scanning the horizon for anything that looked like it might become the next big account. I liked that part of the job, that mix of curiosity and nerve it demanded, and because Toronto and BlackBerry’s parent company, Research in Motion, in Waterloo were only a hop away, the idea of reaching out felt almost obvious. And, truthfully, I’ve always been drawn to tech. I liked the pace, the pressure, the way you could take something abstract and breathe life into it with the right mix of imagination and precision.

No brief, no RFP, just nerve

No one had invited us in. There was no polite form to fill out or beautifully worded RFP to decipher. It was just me, a browser window, and the faint hope that Google might reveal a real human being somewhere in the org chart. LinkedIn in those days was about as helpful as a phone book missing half the pages, so I did it the old-fashioned way, following tiny digital breadcrumbs until I found a name that looked vaguely connected to events.

And then I sent the sort of speculative email you only write when you’re young enough to be bold. “Imagine if you parked a massive BlackBerry experiential truck near Wall Street,” I wrote, “and had all the yuppies frothing into their lattes.” Not polite. Not polished. Entirely deliberate. A vivid, slightly provocative image designed to cut through and make the reader see it instantly.

Somehow that email survived the corporate obstacle course and made it to someone who saw enough spark in it to forward it to someone else, who in turn handed it to a person in the trade show team. And before long, I was on a flight to Waterloo with our Office Managing Director, heading into a meeting with BlackBerry’s head of marketing that no one had asked for, no one had scheduled, and yet suddenly felt strangely inevitable.

They didn’t hand us a grand global brief or promise to transform our agency overnight. Instead, they offered something far more valuable: a small guerrilla-style project in New York. The sort of assignment that carries just enough risk to keep you awake at night and just enough visibility to shift the trajectory of your career if you get it right.

We delivered. That initial project opened the door to further work, developing into a sustained client relationship and one of the more significant accounts for the agency at the time.

Why it worked, looking back

Looking back, the whole thing began with nothing more dramatic than a hunch, a map of North America, and a single sentence that sketched a scene vivid enough to make someone stop and picture it.

What I was doing wasn’t traditional sales outreach at all, but a form of communication in its own right. It was, in a way, a tiny piece of brand experience for Jack Morton, delivered one email at a time.

Every message, every speculative idea, every bold little nudge was an opportunity to show who we were, how we thought, and what it might feel like to work with us. Creative new business isn’t only about timing or tender documents. It’s about expressing your brand through the way you approach people, trusting your instincts when an idea stirs, and recognising that the first impression you create can be the opening chapter of a very long relationship.

It reinforced something I’ve seen repeatedly since: new business doesn’t only come through formal processes, it often starts with a clear point of view, well expressed at the right moment.

And if you’re lucky, and just a bit brave, you find yourself stepping through a door you opened with nothing more than a story, a spark and the confidence to send it.