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Ok, seriously, what’s Vodafone and RIM (the guys who make the Blackberry handsets and provide the Blackberry service) thinking?

Expanding customer base is always a good thing, but at the cost of diluting the positioning of what has so far been a core offering?

Execution wise, the ad is brilliant. No doubts about that. It is the messaging that gets all confusing. Blackberry means business. It means enterprise. It means work. Sure, you could have some fun with music and a camera, but you would not (rather, should not) buy a Blackberry for just that.

Now what does RIM really want Blackberry to be perceived as? A cool dude’s yet another showoff gadget? If yes, then the ad does the job well. At the same time, a 40-something (serious) business user may not take too kindly to him being addressed as a boy, irrespective of the color of his berries. At a time when RIM has been at the receiving end of the government’s stupid move to want to monitor Blackberry traffic, the last thing the company needed was an ad campaign that takes away the seriousness that Blackberry is.

Just when you thought the ad could not trivialize the Blackberry any more, we are told that this ad is for a prepaid service. Wait. Blackberry. And prepaid. Since this is an ad review, I will not question the rationale behind pairing student-ish prepaid with corporate-ish Blackberry. But I will say this much – it sounds odd and funny…

Unless, of course, Blackberry is walking out of the enterprise game. Could this be a sign of things to come? To end with the clichéd phrase – only time will tell.