[mlisook]

I suspect this will go down as one of the best viral / word of mouth campaigns of all time. People will be studying it in grad school and writing their PhD dissertations on it.

Don’t you see – they want just us to have the Pre first. Not just anyone in the public, they want us.

Just think about it. The vast majority of the public knows nothing of the Pre. Suddenly, without warning, one June day its everywhere. People have it. People have it and are beaming. Not just anyone, mind you, it’s the cognoscenti – the gadget, phone and tech experts - the ones people ask about gadgets. Suddenly 300,000 experts just adopted the same phone at the same time and they can’t help but grin ear to ear.

It will be shock and awe!

And the iPhone? Sure the iPhone mavens will try to talk about the new features of their two year old phone, but really, who cares? That’s so 2007. And who thought we'd convert a million iPhone owners anyway?

[no1smartphone]

Palm must have read Malcolm Gladwell and the tipping point!

[mlisook]

Palm must have read Malcolm Gladwell and the tipping point!

There's no doubt about it.

This campaign rocks! Look there's over 800 people reading this forum right now, the exact right people.

[notabun]

I for one love what Palm is doing because if supply is low it allows the more avid followers of the Pre to get one at launch. After launch they should advertise the heck out of it though.

[notabun]

I suspect this will go down as one of the best viral / word of mouth campaigns of all time. People will be studying it in grad school and writing their PhD dissertations on it.

Don’t you see – they want just us to have the Pre first. Not just anyone in the public, they want us.

Just think about it. The vast majority of the public knows nothing of the Pre. Suddenly, without warning, one June day its everywhere. People have it. People have it and are beaming. Not just anyone, mind you, it’s the cognoscenti – the gadget, phone and tech experts - the ones people ask about gadgets. Suddenly 300,000 experts just adopted the same phone at the same time and they can’t help but grin ear to ear.

It will be shock and awe!

And the iPhone? Sure the iPhone mavens will try to talk about the new features of their two year old phone, but really, who cares? That’s so 2007. And who thought we'd convert a million iPhone owners anyway?

+1

[jbg7474]

2. Launch on time (and yes, they're still very much on time) with less inventory, and keep the marketing light. In essence, do a very soft launch. Of course, in response to this, folks on this forum are now screaming because the marketing has been too light. "They should be advertising more! Nobody outside the tech geek world, in fact nobody outside of this forum, even knows about the Pre! How can Palm compete against Apple with marketing like this?!? They're gonna fail and we're all gonna die. Aaargh!"

I think one of the reasons people are upset about a lack of marketing is because we want to show someone our new phone and have them say, "Wow! Is that the new Palm Pre?!? Oh, I'm so jealous! Can I touch it?"

As of right now, when we show someone our new phone they'll say, "Huh. What's that, some new Blackberry? That keyboard looks awfully small."

And we're all going to hate that, because we want everyone to validate how cool we are.

[kwarner]

I think one of the reasons people are upset about a lack of marketing is because we want to show someone our new phone and have them say, "Wow! Is that the new Palm Pre?!? Oh, I'm so jealous! Can I touch it?"

As of right now, when we show someone our new phone they'll say, "Huh. What's that, some new Blackberry? That keyboard looks awfully small."

And we're all going to hate that, because we want everyone to validate how cool we are.

Hahahahaha. I keep wondering why people are so upset that Palm isn't promoting the Pre heavily. What do you care? It's a great phone. But ahhhhh, it's not cool unless everyone else wants one too. Bingo!

[philipsv]

I suspect this will go down as one of the best viral / word of mouth campaigns of all time. People will be studying it in grad school and writing their PhD dissertations on it.

Don’t you see – they want just us to have the Pre first. Not just anyone in the public, they want us.

Just think about it. The vast majority of the public knows nothing of the Pre. Suddenly, without warning, one June day its everywhere. People have it. People have it and are beaming. Not just anyone, mind you, it’s the cognoscenti – the gadget, phone and tech experts - the ones people ask about gadgets. Suddenly 300,000 experts just adopted the same phone at the same time and they can’t help but grin ear to ear.

It will be shock and awe!

And the iPhone? Sure the iPhone mavens will try to talk about the new features of their two year old phone, but really, who cares? That’s so 2007. And who thought we'd convert a million iPhone owners anyway?

My sentiments EXACTLY!

[morningstar1844#IM]

Lets postulate for a moment. Apples best quarter for Iphone sales is always Q1 - the first 3 months of the launch - Iphone 3g - sold 6.9 (Q4 2008) + 4.4 (Q1 2009) + 3.8 (Q2 2009).

If Palm can do a soft launch now and perhaps 6 months down the line do a quick product refresh - this would be awesome - most important - upping the internal memory from 8gb to 32gb.

Knowing Palm it will be only 16

But what they should give us is 16 G unit and the Micro SD!!

[i.freakin.heart.palm]

the less they market this the better. it will make it easier for all of us to get our phones on saturday!

[freedomflyer]

Honestly, and this sounds stupid, I really want Palm to sell JUST enough to stay in business, make a bit of profit, and keep innovating. I'm not buying the Pre, my brother is, and both of us are really annoyed that everyone our age, in their twenties, has an iPhone. Especially the girlies with those nasty ugly pink silicon cases. I think it will be great for people to have a totally sexy, TOTALLY nice phone, that not a lot of people have. It makes it seem a lot more exclusive. and WHO DOESNT LIKE EXCLUSIVE!?

[clevelandrocker]

Very interesting theories about marketing strategy, albeit somewhat narcissistic! Don't you think, however, that by now the actual 'plan' would have leaked out a bit from Sprint and Palm officials?

[dave75]

Very interesting theories about marketing strategy, albeit somewhat narcissistic! Don't you think, however, that by now the actual 'plan' would have leaked out a bit from Sprint and Palm officials?

Don't you think they have been really good at keeping secrets about everything else?

[clevelandrocker]

I just don't understand how this marketing plan has been kept so TOP SECRET.

[mlisook]

I just don't understand how this marketing plan has been kept so TOP SECRET.

I think the very essence is the secrecy. There is enough info for those who want to know to know. There is little enough for the rest of the public to ask us about it next week.

[Captweez]

Honestly, and this sounds stupid, I really want Palm to sell JUST enough to stay in business, make a bit of profit, and keep innovating. I'm not buying the Pre, my brother is, and both of us are really annoyed that everyone our age, in their twenties, has an iPhone. Especially the girlies with those nasty ugly pink silicon cases. I think it will be great for people to have a totally sexy, TOTALLY nice phone, that not a lot of people have. It makes it seem a lot more exclusive. and WHO DOESNT LIKE EXCLUSIVE!?

I know when I look at girlies the first thing I check out is their cell phone case...

[TomD]

I suspect this will go down as one of the best viral / word of mouth campaigns of all time. People will be studying it in grad school and writing their PhD dissertations on it.

Don’t you see – they want just us to have the Pre first. Not just anyone in the public, they want us.

Just think about it. The vast majority of the public knows nothing of the Pre. Suddenly, without warning, one June day its everywhere. People have it. People have it and are beaming. Not just anyone, mind you, it’s the cognoscenti – the gadget, phone and tech experts - the ones people ask about gadgets. Suddenly 300,000 experts just adopted the same phone at the same time and they can’t help but grin ear to ear.

It will be shock and awe!

And the iPhone? Sure the iPhone mavens will try to talk about the new features of their two year old phone, but really, who cares? That’s so 2007. And who thought we'd convert a million iPhone owners anyway?

I feel you've brought us a Sally Field moment! Palm likes us geeks, they really like us!

[godsidekurt]

I am excited to see that commercial out tomorrow

[TVMA]

It's a pseudo-soft launch, get it? Nobody's supposed to know about it. Then, after the new iPhones, Blackberry Storm 2, and all the new WinMob models running a new OS are launched later in the year then WHAM! Everybody goes to buy a Pre instead.

WHAM, hard to attract the masses when no one even heard of it.