[dtokarz]

They could say Sept. 30th and that would be a big relief to me. Not knowing the date is what is killing me!

[robertpetry]

Re: the vacation freeze.

I went into my local Sprint store and was chatting with the three people behind the counter. I asked about a vacation freze and they looked at eachother and laughed. They said they had never heard of one. Actually two said they had May vacations planned and they would quit before cancelling them.

So at least in central indiana, there is either no blackout or it was poorly communicated.

[xchpstang]

Re: the vacation freeze.

I went into my local Sprint store and was chatting with the three people behind the counter. I asked about a vacation freze and they looked at eachother and laughed. They said they had never heard of one. Actually two said they had May vacations planned and they would quit before cancelling them.

So at least in central indiana, there is either no blackout or it was poorly communicated.

Are you sure it was a corporate store? A lot of dealer or third party stores may look just like Sprint stores. It is my understanding that the vacation blackout affected corporate stores only.

[dtokarz]

I thought I remember reading somewhere that the vacation blackout was meant for management only.

[Darth Pooh]

I thought I remember reading somewhere that the vacation blackout was meant for management only.

That is correct.

[CJDynasty]

I thought I remember reading somewhere that the vacation blackout was meant for management only.

Correct, the Pre Advocate/trainer at my store is on vacation freeze in May and June. So Im leaning towards a June release date. It also makes sense. 2 weeks is NOT enough time to ramp up marketing and advertising for this phone. Like most have said, many people DONT even know what a Pre is nor know the capabilities. Sprint needs to get it together soon if they want to even sniff the sales of the iPhone/Storm.

[asforme]

2 weeks is NOT enough time to ramp up marketing and advertising for this phone.

Who says it's not? I'm sorry, but your average joe is not going to wait a month for a new phone when there are other smartphones they could actually buy now. Money spent on advertising to the masses now would be money down the drain. They should not only wait until after it has been released, but wait until the initial rush is over before they start advertising. Then they will have the advantage of already having good word of mouth out there and when someone sees the ad, they will be able to go buy it immediately.

[Darrion88]

Kind of jives with what my advocate and that Palm rep said to me... they are getting their devices mid-May.

Didn't your advocate say he was getting his phone two weeks ago?

[patchs]

Didn't your advocate say he was getting his phone two weeks ago?

I think the advocates will be (are) under a NDA.
There's a thread on another Pre forum where a guy was playing with his pal's, who's a Sprint employee. He said there was NDA and couldn't post any pics.

[Darth Pooh]

Didn't your advocate say he was getting his phone two weeks ago?

Yup. I followed up in that thread.

[Pearl_Diva]

Who says it's not? I'm sorry, but your average joe is not going to wait a month for a new phone when there are other smartphones they could actually buy now. Money spent on advertising to the masses now would be money down the drain. They should not only wait until after it has been released, but wait until the initial rush is over before they start advertising. Then they will have the advantage of already having good word of mouth out there and when someone sees the ad, they will be able to go buy it immediately.

No they need to advertise NOW to get the mainstream interested and away from considering other phones. Releasing with no advertising is a disaster. Hoping people will get interested after it's released is a backwards way of selling.

[Aridon]

No they need to advertise NOW to get the mainstream interested and away from considering other phones. Releasing with no advertising is a disaster. Hoping people will get interested after it's released is a backwards way of selling.

We are likely a month maybe 5 weeks from release. So why on earth would they waste money advertising a phone that early when the average American has the attention span of a 12 year old ADD kid?

Save the advertising money for when they are a week out. The first wave of inventory and sales is important but hardly a deal breaker as MOST PEOPLE AREN"T BUYING IT RIGHT AWAY regardless of what we techie geeks might think.

[Pearl_Diva]

You mean let phones sit in Sprint stores because no one(except those who follow these types of boards) knows the phone is out and that it's a cool phone?

As we've seen with other phones, the first wave of sales can be an important indicator.

[asforme]

The first wave is going to be gadget geeks, who all already know about the phone. If someone needs a TV ad to tell them what the Pre is, they're not interested enough to wait around for it.

I think there is enough hype without advertising to easily sell a good amount of phones on launch and force many locations out of stock. After that subsides and every store has phones to sell, then they should start advertising.

[Pearl_Diva]

Honesty, how many gadget geeks are there really? Sprint and Palm need the masses, not specific groups. And yes, the masses DO need to be advertised to.


There's also no guarantee the majority of gadget geeks will jump on this phone, especially since they get tied up into a contract. That's too big of a gamble to take and neither company can afford it.

[Aridon]

And those masses will come, slowly but surely. Most people are stuck in contracts anyways so when they switch carriers it tends to be a pretty big ordeal. So advertising is lost on most of them since the average person isn't going to pay an ETF for a phone. The few people that come up between now and then are pretty much lost because they CAN'T BUY IT YET anyways. So short of the tech geeks that wait for the latest and greatest who exactly are you targeting in your ad?

This isn't bake sale where the cookies you made go bad if you don't sell them all in 24 hours. A reasonable amount of first wave phones, 400k, will be available and with the sign ups of what? 700k? They should mostly all go pretty quickly. Even the Iphone took time to break a million sales in the USA and it was the cherry popper phone PDA phone for many.

Sprint also has millions of existing subs which will be interested in the upgrade, they will attract new subs and old subs like me will return.

There is no rush and no point to blow their loads advertising a phone a month before release. Unless they want all the idiots showing up in Sprint stores leaving pissed off because its not available yet. The average consumer is a borderline retard and doesn't really pay attention.

So a week or so before release we'll start seeing some ads and once it is available and they have stock I expect it to ramp up.

[Pearl_Diva]

Palm is in trouble, they don't need "slowly". They need to get people interested in them again NOW, by letting people know they're releasing a hot new phone soon.

That's also a pretty offensive generalization about consumers. Consumers can also be educated and also have sense enough to call the store first to see if they're expecting a shipment. Or even start doing research on the internet.

[prereferee]

More than 2 weeks of direct TV advertising is simply a waste of money. They are using the Now Network ads to soften the ground, people need to warm to the concept of wanting Sprint. You really can't start advertising a product too soon before release lest you get people pissed about advertising a product that isn't out and them losing interest. After a while people start tuning it out.
More than likely they will do something similar to what you see with movies, where they start the advertising with a few well targeted commercials 2-2.5 weeks out to catch the low hanging fruit. Then they start an all out advertising blitz the week before. Product placements will happen before the direct advertising, and have likely been in the works for months.
Don't assume they don't know what they are doing, even if you don't trust Palm and Sprint for marketing, the advertising industry publications have been praising Sprint's efforts here, especially the web advertising.
There is no sense in advertising something too soon. And again, they have time.

[NickDG]

Palm is in trouble, they don't need "slowly". They need to get people interested in them again NOW, by letting people know they're releasing a hot new phone soon.

That's also a pretty offensive generalization about consumers. Consumers can also be educated and also have sense enough to call the store first to see if they're expecting a shipment. Or even start doing research on the internet.

Sounds like you are NOT in a marketing job.

[Beanis]

I think they have a couple of choices from the info that has leaked out, due to likely low stockpiles of pre's:

1)Throw out the few amount of pre's they have stockpiled, relatively soon, for the geeks waiting for it, with minimal advertising.

2) Wait a few more weeks until they have enough to meet mass demand and THEN start advertising for a couple weeks heavily, and THEN release it.

I'm more inclined to believe Sprint would do 1. At least, the should, if they are smart.