The Palm Pre launched to much fanfare in 2009, with good reviews for the most part. The smart phone had excellent features, was easy to use with a slide out keyboard, good color and contrast on the screen. So many things that made it a viable competitor to the iPhone and Blackberry, not to mention the Google Droid phones. And, it already had a substantial customer base from Palm, eager for a little prompting to convert to this new product that was priced right and positioned for success. The Pre launched and Palm continued to loose market share and customers to the Blackberry, iPhone and the Droid until the announcement at the end of May, 2010 that HP had purchased Palm.
What Palm did wrong? – just about everything, but most of all was to launch a campaign with a creepy Alice in Wonderland type ad Go with the Flow featuring the fair haired Tamara Hope sitting on a mushroom surrounded by tiny folk all responding to her actions on the phone. The implication being, she could “command her world” to do what she desired. This ad was both confusing and disconnecting from what the competitors where saying about their brands. Apple only needs to show you someone’s hand going to the iPhone clicking on aps and you see a world unfold that’s completely clear and connected to your personal experience, from driving directions, to finding restaurants to looking at pictures all with the touch of a finger. The Blackberry is all about email connectivity. The entire brand is built around how you are in touch with those important emails.
The Pre? It’s about a lovely blond lady commanding her minions. That is way too abstract for a consumer to understand the real value of this phone in less than ten seconds.
An article in AdAge tried to explain the campaign. Mr. Koepke from the agency didn’t quite understand how creepy the ad was and defends the Tamara Hope spots saying:
“We weren’t trying to creep people out, but one thing I have learned now in this digital age is people can be as rude as they want as long as they don’t have to look you in the face,” Mr. Koepke said. “The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.”
Now that’s the weirdest justification for an ad I’ve hear. Because everyone is talking about how bad the ad is it’s good for the product?
Palm revisited it’s strategy in December of 2009– one last chance to jump in there and grab sales and market share. The new campaign, with a new agency launched in print, TV and just about everywhere online said you can be connected to all the busy things in your life with the theme – Life Moves Fast, Don’t Miss a Thing, a much better, more grounded campaign but still what’s different between what a Pre can deliver and the iPhone, Google Nexus One or Blackberry? Each of these products could say the same thing.
Now with a new owner: HP, it’s clear that the Palm Pre will be built into a broader brand spectrum of the HP world, It will be one of many devices in the HP digital landscape. Exactly how the Pre will be positioned is unclear but HP is big enough to figure it out and do it right.
Check out the two ads run by pre through this link to the IntoMobile Forum –