BlackBerry Chief Chen Briefs White House on Product Plans

Maybe BlackBerry (BBRY) chief John Chen figures the device maker’s best ad strategy isn’t a billboard on the highway, an online video or a splashy picture posted online. Rather, a publicized visit to the White House to lay out the mobile device maker’s product road map and check out what staffers like and don’t like about their BlackBerries makes for a pretty decent ad campaign all by itself.

Chen, who doesn’t seem to miss much in his plan to resuscitate BlackBerry, “briefed,” (is that a nice word for lobbied?) the White House on the smartphone maker’s plans. The move appears to be simultaneously a feel-good gesture and one to guard its long-standing position as the federal government’s mobile device of choice.

President Barack Obama and White House staffers are issued BlackBerry devices by the government.

“As part of my meeting customers I have briefed the White House from an IT perspective the kind of plan we’re going to follow,” Chen told Bloomberg. “We’ve spoken to them just in a customer outreach and they were nice enough to share some of their thoughts with me.”

Chen declined to provide any details on input the White House offered—“that would make national headline news,” but offered, “they gave me some thoughts, some of the stuff they want and they like, some things they would like us to work on. I take it a lot to heart.”

Reading between the lines, however, Chen provided some clues about where the White House discussion may have proceeded and the device maker’s strategy going forward. Providing value well beyond MDM is where he’s apparently headed.

“MDM is very commoditized,” he said. “The real trick is to offer enterprise customers a lot more than MDM, whether you build and manage applications, identity management—our BBM, for example, has messaging layers—these are all important stuff, so, yes, the competition is on—huge amount of market potential.”

Since taking over as BlackBerry chief last November, Chen reportedly has met with 100 of the vendor’s biggest customer. Among its core base of government and business users, BlackBerry’s competitive advantage traditionally has been its encryption technology and its popular BBM instant messaging service. Chen now has moved to meld the two: At the Mobile World Congress event last week he rolled out a BBM version sporting beefed up security.

Chen also discusssed the device maker’s name change last year from Research in Motion to BlackBerry, an identity shift that occurred before he took over the company’s helm.

“It’s hard for me to comment on whether that’s a good or bad thing—not being there to see the pros and cons. I personally like Research in Motion a lot better.” But he discounted the impact of the mobile manufacturer’s name in defining its strategic execution. There are no plans to change back to RIM, he said.

“Naming is naming,” he said. “We just have to compete and do the right thing. We have a good brand and we will just continue that brand.”

Chen expects BlackBerry will bring to market its impending Q20 device in September or October, although he’d like it to be available “yesterday.” He said it’s important that the Q20’s user interface, which returns some buttons and features from past models, fits the needs both of new customers and the vendor’s legacy base.