Blackberry Storm Debut Draws Customers, and a Competitor

Prisoners made the point that the Blackberry Storm is pricier than the Peek.

The launch of the new Blackberry Storm device last Friday draw long lines of customers as predicted, but it also drew a guerrilla-marketing stunt from a competitive product.

Brand reps from Peek, an e-mail and text only mobile device with no monthly contracts, dressed as prisoners and handcuffed themselves to a Blackberry outside the busy Verizon store in midtown Manhattan. The message? Don’t be sucked in by Blackberry’ expensive two-year contracts.

“Peek wants to warn potential Storm customers of the danger of spending costly contract fees for their services,” Grow Marketing, the firm that staged the event,” said in a release.

The Peek event was scheduled to run from 7:45 to 11 am. Let’s hope they got there early. More than 200 people waited from the wee hours to get into the Verizon store to buy the phones, but many were turned away by 8 am, one hour after opening, when the store ran out of the phones. The police had to be called in to restore order, according to Reuters.

The Storm from Research in Motion is expected to compete with Apple’s iPhone.