No Advertising on Verizon -- and with Good Reason

[rlopin]

Many folks are wondering why Verizon has not been advertising heavily for the Pixi/Pre Plus the way they did for Droid. Perhaps it's because they want to first flush out any carrier specific bugs. For example, the recent issue with GPS not getting an accurate fix, or with MMS not working when WiFi is turned on. There were also reports of Verizon reducing their initial order of Pre's/Pixi's as a result of some as of yet undisclosed issue.

It would be smart to hold off on heavy advertising until bugs are discovered and fixed to avoid an order of magnitude increase in Verizon's support costs. This would also avoid the negative press that would surely circulate if wide spread issues were reported. In addition, they may also be waiting for 1.4 to be released so they can advertise more features (video editing, Flash support).

In the web world this would be akin to launching a site as a public beta, aka, a "soft launch". There are some things that simply don't surface during QA testing until a large mass of people are testing the actual devices "in the wild". It is not uncommon and is actually a good practice.

Your thoughts?

[storino03]

Nah, it's either they just don't want to invest money, or Palm doesn't have the money for Verizon to advertise.

[Tiddlekins]

Originally Posted by storino03

Nah, it's either they just don't want to invest money, or Palm doesn't have the money for Verizon to advertise.

Twitter / Verizon Wireless USA: @vara411 @RanGT Good obse ...

[QuarlesLT]

TV ads are coming soon, folks. Be patient.

[QuarlesLT]

Originally Posted by Tiddlekins

[url= / Verizon Wireless USA: @vara411 @RanGT Good obse ...[/url]

That was the exact quote I was looking for, thanks! @foxycar on Twitter said it last week, too.

[rlopin]

Sounds great, but what do you think about the speculated rationales given as to why it's been delayed thus far?

[playboy]

Originally Posted by rlopin

Sounds great, but what do you think about the speculated rationales given as to why it's been delayed thus far?

Precentral posters are the ones speculating on such things as Verizon waiting for 1.4 or Flash. Newsflash, the majority of buyers don't know what a 1.4 is nor would their purchasing decision be based on whether the phone had Flash. Flash is not a killer feature so why would V wait to hold off on television advertising until Flash is available? Its not a point that makes the Pre or any phone for that matter standout. Television advertising is coming.

[QuarlesLT]

Originally Posted by playboy

Precentral posters are the ones speculating on such things as Verizon waiting for 1.4 or Flash. Newsflash, the majority of buyers don't know what a 1.4 is nor would their purchasing decision be based on whether the phone had Flash. Flash is not a killer feature so why would V wait to hold off on television advertising until Flash is available? Its not a point that makes the Pre or any phone for that matter standout. Television advertising is coming.

What he said.

[rlopin]

They may not know what 1.4 is and they may not know even what Flash is, but they may darn well know what it means to watch videos on Hulu, play Farmville on Facebook, view interactive content on Disney, and let's not forget the unspoken ability to view you-know-what kind of sites.

[Complex Pants]

Originally Posted by rlopin

Sounds great, but what do you think about the speculated rationales given as to why it's been delayed thus far?

Cause they wanted to do it during the Super Bowl!!

[playboy]

Originally Posted by rlopin

They may not know what 1.4 is and they may not know even what Flash is, but they may darn well know what it means to watch videos on Hulu, play Farmville on Facebook, view interactive content on Disney, and let's not forget the unspoken ability to view you-know-what kind of sites.

Sure, but do they know that Flash allows them to do that and that 1.4 will pave the way for Flash. No and they don't care. All they care is that it works but then Iphone users aren't exactly crying b/c they don't have Flash. Plus, when is the last time you or anyone else saw a phone being advertised based on the latest update the phone was give or that it has Flash? Commercials can be done without showing websites that support Flash or features of the phone that work without 1.4.

I'm just saying that what folks on Precentral care about isn't exactly what the general public or the companies selling and making the phone care about. P/C folks are a miniscule subset of the potential phone buyers and those P/C folks that care about Flash are a smaller subset of the P/C folks.

[Grabber5.0]

Originally Posted by Complex Pants

Cause they wanted to do it during the Super Bowl!!

As much as I dislike Verizon (for no particular reason ), that would be really great for Palm.

[freeridstylee]

I've heard a lot of radio ads in the detroit market. I've also seen a lot of online ads. I think they're giving palm more then they give to blackberry.

[netwrkr9]

Originally Posted by freeridstylee

I've heard a lot of radio ads in the detroit market. I've also seen a lot of online ads. I think they're giving palm more then they give to blackberry.

Have not heard a peep here in SoCal, but I see the "bogo" ads for Blackberry phones 2 or 3 times a day on TV. Have not seen any ads for Palm on TV.

[rlopin]

Totally with you all on p|c users being a subset of phone buyer's. That is why I couched the benefits in terms of what Joe and Jane public would understand and desire. Sure you can show ads without showing off any of the 1.4 features or without showing a web site that uses Flash. However, wouldn't even a general consumer relate to watching back episodes of 24 a la Hulu, or playing that extremely addicting Farmville game? Adobe might even throw in some Ad spend to Palm. It would send a shot across the bow to Apple.

In any case, this thread is starting to get a little off topic. What I am really curious to hear is what folks think the primary reasons are for not having seen any heavy advertising to date. For example, I like the Superbowl rationalization!

[GarrettQ]

not to steer this thread off topic, but it still kinda bugs me that its not even mention on VZW's home page. If the average consumer didnt follow CES, Palm, or its fan sites, then the majority of them have no idea a VZW Pre exists.

[playboy]

Originally Posted by rlopin

Totally with you all on p|c users being a subset of phone buyer's. That is why I couched the benefits in terms of what Joe and Jane public would understand and desire. Sure you can show ads without showing off any of the 1.4 features or without showing a web site that uses Flash. However, wouldn't even a general consumer relate to watching back episodes of 24 a la Hulu, or playing that extremely addicting Farmville game? Adobe might even throw in some Ad spend to Palm. It would send a shot across the bow to Apple.

In any case, this thread is starting to get a little off topic. What I am really curious to hear is what folks think the primary reasons are for not having seen any heavy advertising to date. For example, I like the Superbowl rationalization!

In my opinion the primary reason for the lack of tv advertising is b/c V prolly dedicated most of its tv advertising push towards Droid phones. Secondly, as other have mentioned, the Pre and Pixi aren't exclusive to V and will be on ATT in the summer, so a large tv ad buy the size of the Droid buys don't really seem likely. Also, Palm has to do some advertising as well and I suspect that you'll likely Palm's own advertising at some point.

As far as watching shows like 24 or Gossip Girl on the Pre goes, the people that really want to watch tv shows and are followers of a particular will likely watch on a computer screen or a tv using their dvr they recorded the show on, not a small cellphone screen. Playing Farmville on the phone, sure.

Once again, advertising Flash won't be a shot across anyone's bow b/c the general consumer already thinks that a standard feature and as such wouldn't come off as a game changer type of feature. Apple would just counter with you can watch Youtube. With the strong movement towards HTLM 5, Ogg and other video streaming techniques pushing Flash really has no added benefit. And you have to remember that Flash can cause more headaches than it is worth along with the stress it places on processors and batteries. Palm and V would be better off not even mentioning the feature.

[playboy]

Originally Posted by GarrettQ

not to steer this thread off topic, but it still kinda bugs me that its not even mention on VZW's home page. If the average consumer didnt follow CES, Palm, or its fan sites, then the majority of them have no idea a VZW Pre exists.

I agree. V has certainly done a horrible job positioning the phones are their website.

[rlopin]

Originally Posted by playboy

As far as watching shows like 24 or Gossip Girl on the Pre goes, the people that really want to watch tv shows and are followers of a particular will likely watch on a computer screen or a tv using their dvr they recorded the show on, not a small cellphone screen

Gotta respectfully disagree with this particular comment. Tons of folks would love to watch video content on their smartphone. Witness the number of folks on these boards clamoring for SlingPlayer Mobile. (yes, I know, this message board is a fraction of the market). But ask folks who own a Slingbox if they would like to watch it from their phone.

When I had SlingPlayer Mobile on my wm-based Treo 700w I would watch it in waiting rooms, on the bus, and hand it to the kids in the back seat of the car so they could watch the cartoons they recorded on the DVR back home. I paid $35 for the software and thought it was totally worth it.

Slingmedia recently announced they were moving to a Flash-based player thereby opening the possibility of bringing the mobile player to devices that support it.

Watch any video content, from anywhere, in the most popular formats, anytime. Not just YouTube. If Netflix ever adds SilverLight in addition to Flash we'd get that as well.

HTML5 is great for the future and will finally get us out of proprietary Flash, but let's face it, Flash is here NOW and is what you need if you want to watch a ton of content or play any of the 1000's of video games out there right now.

[rlopin]

Originally Posted by playboy

I agree. V has certainly done a horrible job positioning the phones are their website.

You are absolutely right on that. I have been checking everyday to see when/if they are gonna feature it.

Today I noticed a bunch of extra content about the Pre/Pixi but the only way to find it was via the site search on verizonwireless.com. I looked at the description for the Pre. There was a link to the Pixi as well. So I clicked it and looked at the Pixi's description. It was identical to the Pre except for the amount of memory mentioned (should say storage, not memory, but that is a discussion for another day).

Then I clicked on the link that was supposed to take me back to the Pre -- only it was pointing to the same Pixi page I was already on! (it was all in Flash by the way):
http://phones.verizonwireless.com/palm/pre/
http://phones.verizonwireless.com/palm/pixi/

Here is the link to an on-screen emulator:
Verizon Wireless | Palm® Pre Plus Emulator

A couple of days ago the clicking on the contacts button in the quicklaunch bar of the emulator was launching the calendar app instead of the contacts app. They fixed that, so at least they are paying attention.