<p>With BlackBerry falling apart day by day, fans have never been more eager to reminisce on the pioneering smartphone maker's rise. While it's easy to forget the celebrity that the BlackBerry brand once held, Bloomberg Businessweek spoke with a number of old employees most having worked there when it was still named RIM who remember it well. "There wasn't a meeting I couldn't get," Vincent Washington, a BlackBerry business development manager with the company between 2001 and 2011, tells Businessweek. "All I had to say was, 'Hey, I'm bringing the BlackBerrys.'"</p><p>"Hey, can I get your PIN?"</p><p>The excitement quickly extended to customers. At launches in Jamaica and Trinidad, BlackBerry owners were reportedly invited to discos where they could get temporary tattoos that, when scanned, revealed their BBM PIN. "People would say, 'Scan me, scan me.' And as the evening went on, people would get more risque and put the tattoos on different parts of their body," Lidia Feraco, a BlackBerry marketing manager with the company between 2005 and 2011, tells Businessweek. She says that instead of asking for each others' phone numbers, the classic pickup line morphed into, "'Hey, can I get your PIN?'"</p><p>While public figures from President Obama to Kim Kardashian have been known to use BlackBerrys, at some point BlackBerry missed out on a shot at one other big name: Justin Bieber. "He said, 'Give me $200,000 and 20 devices, and I'm your brand ambassador,'" Washington tells Businessweek. The pitch wasn't well received, despite Washington speaking in favor of it. "[Marketing] said, 'This kid is a fad. He's not going to last.' I said at the meeting: 'This kid might outlive RIM.'"</p><p><a href="http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/5/5179070/blackberry-rise-and-fall-anecdotes-justin-bieber-nfl-discos">Keep reading...</a></p><p>Read also:</p><p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-05/the-rise-and-fall-of-blackberry-an-oral-history">The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry: An Oral History</a> (Businessweek)</p><p><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/05/justin-bieber-blackberry_n_4391193.html">Justin Bieber Could Have Saved BlackBerry (Maybe)</a> (Huffington Post)</p><p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/05/why-blackberry-turned-down-justin-bieber-brand-ambassador">The un-Beliebers: why BlackBerry turned down Justin Bieber offer to be a ...</a> (The Guardian)</p><p>Explore: <a href="http://news.google.com/news/more?ncl=dM_3ejWmpgm0GNMD4PGbmOAj-UlCM&ned=us">29 additional articles.</a></p>