BlackBerry is one brand that is seen a lot in the new season of Netflix’s original show House of Cards. People who have seen the show know that product placement is huge. Concave Brand Tracking did some research and found that BlackBerry is the number one mobile phone brand for visibility and screen time within the show.
BlackBerry popular again
To reach the conclusion, the research firm was among the first to rake the latest season of the show. BlackBerry lost to a large number of new competitors in season 3 of the show, but it has a good showing in season 4.
Samsung, Nokia/Microsoft and OnePlus played a very crucial role in eroding Apple’s share of visibility in the latest season, but BlackBerry emerged as the winner, securing the top spot among mobile phone brands. The Canadian smartphone brand secured the top position both in terms of screen time and overall visibility.
BlackBerry’s mobile phone visibility was 28%, while that of Apple was 26%; Samsung stood third with 20%, newcomer OnePlus accounted for 17%, thus securing the fourth position, and Nokia came last with a small share of less than 5%. The picture is very different from season 1, in which there were just two brands seen on the show – Apple and BlackBerry — with Apple being the most popular.
Professional portrayal of devices
Apart from the percentage, another important aspect is how the product has been portrayed on the show. Concave Brand Tracking noted that BlackBerry has been largely portrayed as a professional brand and is used in the context of politics and government and that no new major characters on the show can be seen using its devices. Also people on CrackBerry’s forums made an interesting observation that legacy BlackBerry devices (meaning not BB 10 or the Priv) are shown on the show running BB 10.
This can be seen as good news for the Canadian fir, which has seen some success with its new Priv device, its flagship Android device promising utmost security and privacy to its users. Recently, the company also secured the title of being the fastest to release monthly security patches for its Android-based device.
