This study focuses on measuring the brand personality of BlackBerry mobile phone to find out the changes in brand image after repositioning and targeting youth, and exploring the model validity of Jennifer Aaker’s Brand Personality Scale. The random sampling method was used to collect primary data from different management and engineering colleges of twin cities of Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in India. 695 surveys were conducted, of which 601 respondents had responded and only 417 had filled the questionnaire properly. To perform exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, the sample was divided into two equal parts by randomly selecting about 50% of cases using the filtering algorithm in SPSS (Roy and Vaibhav, 2010). Sample 1 had 209 respondents and sample 2 had 208 respondents. Next, an exploratory factor analysis was performed (on sample 1) on the 38 items of brand personality using the principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The major findings were: sophistication is the most important brand personality dimension of BlackBerry, followed by excitement and ruggedness. Sincerity and competence are not important brand personality dimensions. In sophistication, upper-class is the most important item, followed by charming, smooth and glamorous. In excitement, up-to-date is the most important item, followed by independent, imaginative, exciting and cool. In ruggedness, outdoorsy is the most important item, followed by tough, Western and masculine. So, the company should project sophistication as an important brand personality dimension rather than competence after repositioning the brand while targeting Indian youth.

BlackBerry phone, which was positioned as an enterprise phone for mobile executives, has repositioned itself as per their changed target customer, i.e., youth in India. Even BlackBerry mobile color which was black earlier has been changed to different colors like candy, white, brown etc., to attract youth. Research in Motion (RIM), creator of this phone, in this way did an excellent job in reading the mindset of the youth in India.

BlackBerry market share increased from 9% in 2009 to 13% in 2010. This is the consequence of repositioning the brand as well as targeting. BlackBerry is now considered as a status symbol for college-going youth because they want to imitate the executive culture.

For targeting youth, BlackBerry India changed its communication strategy. In a campaign with Vodafone, they had gone for a slogan, ‘We are BlackBerry Boy’. This advertisement started with the image of a few suit-clad men claiming to be cool, because they use BlackBerry. But soon a bundle of youngsters join the gang and start singing about chatting and surfing (Vodafone BlackBerry TVC). After sometime, BlackBerry again changed its campaign. In the new version of TV commercial, the suit-clad executives are in a depressed mood because now BlackBerry is no longer exclusive for them. The reason behind it is the intrusion made by the young crowd in their exclusive Blackberry world, and they got frustrated and started saying, ‘They are BlackBerry Boys’. It means now Blackberry is made for youth (Chopra, 2012).

Brand Management Journal, The Effect of Repositioning, Brand Personality, An Empirical Study, BlackBerry, Mobile Phones, Research in Motion (RIM), Brand Personality Scale (BPS).