The newly renamed BlackBerry company (formerly Reseach In Motion, RIM) maker of the new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, on Wednesday named Grammy-award winning musician Alicia Keys to its new role: Global Creative Director.
BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins introduced Keys to an audience at the BlackBerry 10 unveiling event in New York City. The pop star talked about how she had previously been a big fan of BlackBerry smartphones, but, employing dating metaphors, said that other, sexier smartphones had caught her eye at the gym and she wavered. Keys’ tweets on Twitter include posts from Instagram, which is available on iPhone and Android and not BlackBerry.
Now, however, Keys said she was back in an “exclusive relationship” with BlackBerry and would be working with the company’s developers, wireless carriers, the entertainment industry and “other superwomen who love BlackBerry” to promote the new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the first two smartphones running it, the Z10 and the Q10, the former of which will be on sale in Europe and Canada in the coming days, and in the U.S. in March.