Copernicus Consulting Group

A social research company

3rd Floor, 720 Bathurst Street
Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2R4
http://copernicusconsulting.net

November 2, 2011

Background

On or around October 7, BlackBerry users in Europe started noticing

problems with their email and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) service. By
October 12, the outage had spread to North America. Not all of BlackBerrys
70 million customers were affected, but a significant portion was.
Copernicus saw an opportunity to understand a little more about the
BlackBerry user and their attachment to their smartphone. We decided to
strike while the iron was hot! We immediately launched an online survey to
get users fresh impressions of the BlackBerry outage.
This is the first of several brief analytical papers we will offer, based on the
data collected. In this paper, we investigate the open-ended question, How
did the recent BlackBerry outage make you feel?
Table of Contents
Background......................................................................................................1
How Did The Outage Make Respondents Feel?................................................2
Negative Sentiment......................................................................................3
Frustration and Anger................................................................................3
Disconnection............................................................................................4
Positive and Neutral Sentiment....................................................................5
Implications.....................................................................................................5
Brand Equity Impact.....................................................................................5
Normalization of Instantaneous Communication..........................................6
Figure 1: Table Summarizing Response Sentiment..........................................2
Figure 2: Infographic "How did the BlackBerry Outage make you feel?".........2

How Did The Outage Make Respondents Feel?

We offered respondents an open-ended question to tell us how the outage

made them feel. 105 of our 116 respondents filled in the text box, suggesting
that there was a strong desire to talk about their feelings. i We hand-coded
these responses into 3 categories: Positive, Neutral and Negative.
Figure 1: Table Summarizing Response Sentiment
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Negative
82

Neutral
18

Positive
5

Below is an infographic summary of their responses. We generated this

infographic using wordle.net. We fed all responses, in complete form, into
wordle.net, which then generated this word cloud. The size of the word
indicates the frequency of it being mentioned. The larger the word, the more
frequently it was used by participants.
Figure 2: Infographic "How did the BlackBerry Outage make you feel?"

Negative Sentiment
Frustration and Anger
The first theme among responses is largely unsurprising: respondents were
angry about the outage. We can see quickly that frustration, anger and
annoyance was a very common reaction. Users were also disappointed
and upset. Some were even sad. The complete comments of these
respondents give a deeper picture, one that suggests respondents are losing
patience with RIM:
Annoyed. Again.
Out of pocket/ripped off/ NOT loyal
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Ugh, not again.

That I am not getting the services I'm paying for. Very
frustrating and after having continuous problems with
blackberry I am ready to move on to another smart phone.
Angry, frustrated and helpless.
Extremely angry and frustrated. I want to leave blackberry
because of it.
Respondents were quick were quick to mention iPhones or Androids as
potential alternatives. The competitors were clearly top of mind at the time
of the outage. Switching away from BlackBerry is something users said they
were considering. While the frustration of the outage was still quite fresh in
respondents minds, but it is unclear how many of them went right out to get
an non-BlackBerry smartphone.
Future research should check the market penetration rate for BlackBerry over
the next few months. We suspect there will be a spike in favour of BlackBerry
competitors, in periods where carriers offer new upgrades.

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Disconnection
Respondents also mentioned being disconnected, which is unsurprising,
given the nature of the BlackBerry as an immediate communication device.
But the sheer size of the word in our infographic indicates the number of
mentions it received, suggesting the BlackBerry brand is transforming the
way we actually are in the world. In other words, the BlackBerry outage
could change how we feel about being with and around other people.
That is a significant impact of a single device!
Some respondents equate this outage with lost opportunity and their very
ability to speak, though the effect was not universal:
Unavailable. Out of the loop.
Feel that I lost opportunities
Confused, disconnected, worried that I'm missing critical
information for a pitch tomorrow.
Well since this doesn't happen often not too bad.
It doesn't bother me. It hasn't affected my ability to
communicate.
It's important to keep it in perspective. We survived just fine
before smart phones.
Anxious.
Its amazing that a single device could have this kind of impact on people.
Clearly, some people were able to put the outage in perspective, but others
saw the device as their primary conduit to the rest of the world.
The BlackBerry, like the mere telephone before it, has become a device that
brings our friends, co-workers and families to us. Likewise, it can cut us off
from those people.

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Positive and Neutral Sentiment

Positive and neutral responses were, by far, the minority. It is curious that
some respondents used positive or ambivalent words, given the strength of
the negative responses. They liked the outage and reported the outage
good, frequently enough to make an impact in the word cloud. Some of
the complete comments in the category show how people felt about this:
Feels good to be unplugged from work email
Good. It gives me a break from work
Ambivalent
These positive and ambivalent comments were few, but they suggest there
is an uneasiness that some respondents had with the BlackBerry and its
impact on their lives.

Implications
Brand Equity Impact
Interestingly, participants also used the word RIM quite frequently,
indicating that this was seen as a problem generated by the parent brand,
Research in Motion. RIM should take notice of this tight coupling between
BlackBerry outage and its very company name the RIM brand is tightly
connected (perhaps too tightly) to the BlackBerry brand.
I'm losing confidence in RIM
Disappointed - I had hoped that RIM would wear the storm
well and come out successful, but this incident seems to have
destroyed the faith of many longtime users, especially those
who rely on their BlackBerry for work away from the office.
RIM's architecture is fragile. A couple of servers going down
takes down email globally. This is rather embarrassing and not
something that instills confidence. RIM is known for rock solid
email - now there's nothing left for them to compete on.
Sad for Rim. Go android
All in all, it appears that BlackBerrys central brand values of
approachable, informed, and confident have indeed been tarnished

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by this outage. People have lost confidence in the BlackBerry itself, making
it all the more difficult for RIM to project this image.
Some respondents noted that they were unsurprised or upset at RIM
again, suggesting that the brand is losing momentum. The negative
trajectory of the brand should be of the utmost concern to RIM turning it
around into positive trajectory is an uphill battle.

Normalization of Instantaneous Communication

In our other research we have discovered that being available to everyone at
all times is becoming the new normal. When instantaneous communication
is the norm, there are all sorts of unintended consequences for:

Organizations: People spend more time communicating than innovating

Marketing: Brands are expected to be as available as people

Health and Well-Being: 24/7 availability means little time for recharging
and reflecting

Trash: Unfinished sorting, filing and organizing of things and ideas

begets a subtle, ongoing anxiety of unfinished work

Emergency response: Sudden outages may mean people have lost the
ability to communicate using other media

These kinds of pressures are already giving rise to new businesses like selfstorage facilities and electronic note taking such as Evernote. But we are
also seeing rise in attention fatigue and inability of people to engage with
friends, families, and companies. The BlackBerry outage signals that we
should pay attention to the ways in which we connect to each other.
We will continue to report on these findings in future papers. Stay tuned for
more mobile insight!

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i This survey was opportunistic. We did not have a probability sample, so we do

not and cannot offer any generalizability of these findings. We recruited
respondents via email, social media and the Web. There is likely a bias toward
those more interested in technology in general, and smartphone design in
particular, given the profile of our social media connections. We acknowledge
these methodological limitations but maintain, as Marsh (1984) does, that surveys
are simply the most efficient way to ask many people the same question. We
submit that these findings, while not statistically generalizable, are insightful
nonetheless.

Copernicus Consulting Group Inc.

http://copernicusconsulting.net
Sam Ladner, PhD
Principal
sladner@copernicusconsulting.net