a positive move...
Today at BlackBerry World, RIM arranged a meeting between Thorsten Heins and all of the members of the press who are attending the show. This meeting marked a significant shift in the company's communication strategy.
Under the previous co-CEO structure, the media really never had much of a chance to engage with the top leadership of RIM. Sure, the larger outlets were granted the occasional interview. But there were never CEO addresses to an entire panel of media.
Thorsten hit the ball out of the park today. He said all the right things, and he made people in the room like him and RIM. The importance of this can't be understated. With all of the media bashing that has been happening, even people who don't use smartphones have started to adopt the belief that RIM is dying. The only way to stop this is to have the media actually like your company and want to write nicer stuff.
Thorsten took the stage today and acknowledged the challenges facing RIM, creating a good agreement frame to warm up the audience. But the structure of what came next was brilliantly crafted. He simply had a conversation with everyone and opened up his thought process regarding the changes that he needed to make inside of RIM.