‘Everyone Laughed’

Vincent Washington, senior business development manager at RIM from 2001-2011, in Businessweek’s “The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry: An Oral History”:

One thing we missed out on was that Justin Bieber wanted to rep BlackBerry. He said, “Give me $200,000 and 20 devices, and I’m your brand ambassador,” basically. And we pitched that to marketing: Here’s a Canadian kid, he grew up here, all the teeny-boppers will love that. They basically threw us out of the room. They said, “This kid is a fad. He’s not going to last.” I said at the meeting: “This kid might outlive RIM.” Everyone laughed.

★ Friday, 6 December 2013