Palm Should Go All In With Its Pre Marketing

[jcunwired]

AdAge recently noted that if Palm wasn’t careful, its new Pre handset ran the danger of bumping up against the next model(s) of Apple’s iPhone. While we don’t know for sure when an iPhone refresh is coming, it’s a safe bet that all will be revealed in mid-June at Apple’s developers conference. More concerning to me is something we pointed out on a recent podcast: There’s a head-scratching lack of marketing for the Pre. We’re talking about a company that desperately needs a handset hit, as the venerable Palm OS devices have a meager 2-3 percent of the global smartphone market.

Palm Should Go All In With Its Pre Marketing

[Vander]

Its simply something called a lack of available cash...their burn rate is such that the pre is happening in just the nick of time, otherwise they face running out of money...while Im sure they'd love to be advertising the pre now, they have to use their available ad budget judiciously.

[Libb]

Originally Posted by Vander

Its simply something called a lack of available cash...their burn rate is such that the pre is happening in just the nick of time, otherwise they face running out of money...while Im sure they'd love to be advertising the pre now, they have to use their available ad budget judiciously.

Frankly, it should be on Sprint's shoulders to market this thing, it's almost as important to their survival as it is to Palm's, and they have a more powerful brand name to put behind the Pre than Palm. They've started by sorta quietly leaking little images of the Pre throughout their new ad campaign, just to get the public to lean forward and say, "Hey, I didn't know Sprint had cool looking phones like that..." I hope it builds up to an ad just about the Pre and webOS and how they work together with the Now Network to provide the best experience available on a cellphone today.

I'm sure Palm will do a marketing campaign of its own, but I think the onus of the media war will be fought by Sprint. I personally think they need to just come out swinging and full-on call out the iPhone, saying "Here's what the iPhone can do, and here's what Pre can do - while it's also doing this, this, and three other things. All right NOW." Palm and Sprint are the underdogs in this fight - they need to just come out of the corner aiming for the knockout.

[jhoff80]

Honestly, I don't even think this current campaign should be considered marketing the Pre anyway. I'd say next week or two we'll start seeing real ads specifically for the Pre... we'd better at least, otherwise they'll just get swallowed whole by the hype of the iPhone 3.0 in June.

[TomD]

The plan has been that Sprint would do the big Pre ad campaign. That was announced early on.

Palm seems to be good at placing handsets with celebrities (excluding Stern).

[gibsonhtp]

Palm's input on the current marketing

Twitter / palm_inc: @le_seus Pre is currently ...

[TomD]

Originally Posted by jhoff80

Honestly, I don't even think this current campaign should be considered marketing the Pre anyway. I'd say next week or two we'll start seeing real ads specifically for the Pre... we'd better at least, otherwise they'll just get swallowed whole by the hype of the iPhone 3.0 in June.

Jhoff, you got that right!