This was a fantastic piece of coverage for R.I.M. in the International Herald-Tribune, courtesy of their travel columnist, Roger Collis.

However, it could have been very different.

R.I.M. was determined to expand its media coverage for its first colour BlackBerry device in Europe from its home sectors and into more mainstream publications. I suggested travel writers as their work schedule made having a BlackBerry a genuine boon, but travel journalists in the UK are not the most tech-savvy of people and the client insisted on doing the deskside briefing themself.

The client at the time upset the journalist, and the device was not formatted correctly so the journalist's e-mail reception failed to work. The result was a clutch of spam in the journalist's inbox, an angry journalist who threatened to pan R.I.M. in his article, name the client personally, and state that R.I.M. caused spam.

It took a week of damage limitation and troubleshooting to get the device swapped and couriered to the journalist, but the eventual story received made the effort well worthwhile.