[ youtube link ]
There’s no lying about it, advertising can be pretty annoying sometimes. There are times that its so bad that I decide not to buy the product out of principle and spite, because the commercials are that annoying. The folks at Wired agreed, and they’ve found some dooseys amongst the world of technology advertising. There’s catching netbooks with the body’s largest pair of muscles, annoying people singing badly with their computers, an operating system launch party, sock puppets, and serenades to locomotives. And then there’s Palm, coming in at #4, with that commercial that just creeps us the frak out. You know the one... the juggler in the park. Yeah, he was very good. And you’re creeping me out again! Stop!
With the Droid scaring people with Stealth-dropped bombs, it makes us wonder what's better: annoying or scary?
Thanks to Jason for the tip!
Comments
Yea, even the music in it is annoying... This commercial is everything wrong with advertising. She's not even friggen hot. Even Apple got their ads right with Matt Costa's music.
I do hate this commercial...
WHY...?
I mean even I can think of a better advertisement for palm.
They can still keep it original and metaphorical WITHOUT scaring off potential customers.
Compare this commercial to the Droid Does or Nokia n900. Enough said. Palm biggest release in years and this is how they choose to market it? Head should have rolled and people needed to be Fired for this garbage.
CORRECT!!
Rolling heads!! People need to be FIRED for this GARBAGE!!
Sprint needs to get their marketing together, too. Or off with your heads!
I see where they were going with it. It's naturalistic, anti-consumerism - things their competitors are not.
In execution, it is a thumbs down. Regroup, and react!
Sprint's commercials, on the other hand, are a home run.
i agree the sprint now network commercial was great and even the facebook palm commercial was good! palm one was weak
Like Palm's commercials, the NOW Network doesn't tell you anything about Sprint's features, advantages, & benefits over the other carriers.
T-Mobile, Verizon, & AT+T don't even mention Sprint because Sprint is doing a fine job of sinking their own ship. Sprint needs to attack the other 3 for simply not even mentioning them. Sprint-Nextel has so many great assets, and they don't even understand them, so they sure as heck can't share those benefits with others. Like being able to use walkie-talkie mode WITHOUT towers between two iDEN phones... or roaming on Verizon's voice network... or offering the best value of any carrier, ESP. with Any Mobile, Anytime... having such a great lineup of phones... having the fastest and most reliable 3G data... etc.
Sprint-Nextel needs to pick up the pace. I can understand that Palm wants to focus more on tweaking than advertising, but when they're done tweaking... they better have AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT MARKETING DEPARTMENT.
Both of them need to focus on DIRECT marketing... NOT GENERAL marketing.
::Thumbs Up::
Actually, the Now Network thing is atleast convincing.
Think about a Pre commercial. Do you want to buy the product because of that?
The Sprint Commercial atleast makes people think that Sprint is advanced and the last Sprint commercial showed how much of a price advantage Sprint had over AT&T.
I must be the only one here who's never even seen this commercial on TV. haha I see a LOT of Sprint ("The Now Network") ads on TV, and a lot of Droid commercials, but I still haven't seen a single Pre commercial.
Is this the only one there is so far?
/Kevin
There were a few of this chick, actually. I've only seen them on the Interwebz, myself.. but that's only because I don't watch TV, strictly for the commercials alone.
I could understand maybe one of this chick... BUT A WHOLE SERIES!?!??!
Palm needs to look at Hardees commercial of the Big Hardee -vs- the Big Mac arguing with each other, and the Big Mac just wants to rub up on the Big Hardee to get some of his "juices". All it cost to make was a camera, two hamburgers, and a white room. So total cost is, essentially, just the camera.
Geico also had that brilliant commercial of the HUGE wad of cash texting that chick from the ground. "No, over here." Geico helped her save all that cash... NOT a Palm Pre on Sprint's Everything Data plan.
Why can't people get back to the basics. At least hire the Free Credit Report Dot Com guys to make you a catchy, jam-packed song. Just because you only have 30 seconds doesn't mean you can't fit a song with a lot of text in there. Get people to memorize it...
The pale chick got NO message across to consumers, other than she's a lesbian and has the hots for some juggler. Just silliness, I say... silliness!
hi folks
your´re right this juggler in the park commercial sucks! this tv ad http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuplxyNNjYg is from Telefónica o2 Germany and imo it´s a really good one!
That Actually Is Pretty Good
but it's not a pre one, it's about going online over the air with o2. they display the pre, but it's not about the pre.
Just get over it!
What about posting some NEWS on Precentral for a change? Please stop boring me with your obsession about those commercials. Thats boring and does not make this site more interesting...
hate to be the one to inform you of the obvious but this is the ONLY Pre related news. There sure as hell isn't a lot of positives and there are stories up today about an new lotus app, an up update, a price drop at bell. If what you want is a bunch of breaking news about new apps, 1.3.1 update features, new palm devices, sorry, there is no news with those details. the apps they got are whats out. I mean it's been about two weeks and the value of Palm has nearly been cut in half. There isn't a lot of news out there at the moment. And most of it is bad, about droid, or about Palm going down the tubes. And you can't exactly post just that everyday. I'm sure when interesting news happens they'll post it. as they said in the palmcast, they "aren't holding anything back."
Unfortunately, the commercials are relevant. Why? Because they do nothing to convince people to buy the bloody phone, and if no one buys it they're won't be (m)any apps for it, and the phone, and this site, will slowly die.
Palm's adds remind of the initial add campaign for the Infinity automobile, which were all mystical and mood invoking, but never bothered to tell you why you might want to buy the car. That campaign has gone on to become a case study in bad marketing in business schools. The Pre commercials may well follow that same path.
It's a "she." "Yeah, he was very good" should be "Yeah, she was very good."
and it's a good commercial because it actually is about what the product can do as opposed to being, what is it again "you" or showing a sequence of people showing us random images on their "phone."
The commerials sucked. No doubt in MY mind. But most commercials do suck, not just THESE commercials.
But I do agree....we need to get over it.
Not really interested in A) Palm stock quotes or B) Crappy commercials from three months ago.
I do understand the need to update the front page of this blog, but those two subjects just do not interest me.
there r some good news the baltimore sun states that the droid is good but not great and they also said:
But Android still feels unrefined compared with the iPhone or even the underappreciated Palm Pre, whose WebOS software is even better than the iPhone's. Unlike those phones, it supports few gestures; you can't pinch to zoom in or out of a picture, for instance. And closing or switching between programs isn't nearly as simple or intuitive.
meaning that it actually comfirms that the pre is better then the iphone but just is underappreciated and thats damn true.
As others have said, I think the concept is pretty good, just poor execution. And I think the girl in the spot is just a bad choice. I'm not saying it has to be some fake gooey super model, but that girls is just...strange, creepy.
I wish the Palm Pre had commercials more in the vein of Sprint's Now Network spots. Now those are spectacular commercials. Great style and, as an essential bonus, they tie in with other online campaigns and things that give the spots more relevance.
And tgheir advertising is supposed to communicate that not creep people out!!!! Palm and Sprint may be sinking two ships colliding with the same iceberg with a great product doomed by a flop of an advertising campaign unless something improves.
Any list of this sort that doesn't have any of Apple's annoying and misleading douchebag ads included is automatically suspect.
That doesn't forgive Palm for their strange choice of ad campaigns, but still...
Wired is basically run by, and populated by, Apple fanboys. You won't find much negative press about Apple there.
Apple's iPhone ads at least talk about what the phone can do. That is why people buy phones, isn't it? For what they can do?
P.S. The Droid Commercial didn't scare me much.
Where did they find this chick? I change the channel every time one comes on because Im embarrassed for Palm, this girl scares me shes so creepy.
OMG that girl must have crawled out of a pod somewhere..it's so disturbing to watch.
You would think that Palm and Sprint would have really invested a lot of time and effort into making sure the television advertising commercials for the Pre would have been amazing. Clearly they were not...not have there been any since.
fizzzzzzzle...fizzzzzzle ....thud
These commercials are marketing THE WRONG COUNTRY! Europe appreciates this stuff we find odd and creepy.
wrong!
Im not finding the droid commercials scary at all. Their very factual with a touch of satire.
Factual? So droids are really going to be delivered via stealth bombers and leave big holes in the ground? Seems like quite a liability to me, what if one of those things hits a family in a minivan?
They seriously need to change their ad campaign, this is not only creepy, but irrelevant to the actual topic: The Palm Pre, and what it can do!!
only the music is annoying.
Next to the new HTC "You" campaign, this is one of my favorite commercials ever.
You people are crazy - she's HOT!
To be fair, she can be "hot" *and* "creepy." I also think she's attractive, so I call her "quirky."
But the commercials are *terrible*. They're not terrible because of her ... they're terrible because they simply don't emphasize what the Pre can do, and do better than iPhone or any other smart-phone. Terrible, terrible advertising choices there.
Annoying is better than scary. Strange seems to be the common ground in this case though.
What is WRONG with you people? She is stunning. Very photogenic.
And at least the ad has simple and factual info about the phone, instead of having a bunch of idiots in front of a white background dancing like morons with their trademarked white cables running to their ears, claiming that they're all unique and individual (when in fact they're all just sheep)!
... and that (the Apple of course) ads have no real, actual, useful information in them.
I've been commenting on these commercials since day one. Hated them... HATED THEM! from the get-go. I mean, 7 seconds out of 30 feature the Pre in the juggler ad... SEVEN! Ugh. I just don't get it, because Modernista! (the ad agency responsible for these ads) does a great job with some of the Cadillac commercials...
That said, I just saw the new DROID commercial... ... WTF?! Terrible! If you haven't seen it, click the link in this article.
I loved the first commercial. But the evil droid thing (did you hear how the droid alerts you to text messages?) is a little much.
I like the cute cuddly droid that google created. This phone makes me think that it is going to kill me in my sleep.
Still, I think it's a great phone for verizon, and the end or VZWs nickel and diming people to death.
It's why I left Verizon, and I've been thrilled with Sprint, and my $600 less per year for way more plan. (and I really do pay about $500 less in real money but about $600-700 less in equivalent plan cost).
As a note, those commercials generate tons of buzz on twitter. So people actually do watch them.
I don't love em, actually I find them creepy too, and I don't want to.
Nevertheless, people talk about them, comment on them, and I think that is the point of advertising.
> Nevertheless, people talk about them,
> comment on them, and I think that is
> the point of advertising.
It's really, really not.
Wow... so, it's a shame that she's given that sort of material. She's very pretty and has a nice voice, but the way it's framed she reminds me of the Borg queen. My Pre is going sprout tubules and assimilate me.
The HTC commerical is hot. I can't believe Palm hasn't changed their commercial due to all the negative response. While I love my Palm, I might just get an HTC because of the commercial. To me its just that good.
Both those Android adverts were very inventive and engaging. Palm you should kick yourself for having advertisers block just when you needed a decent campaign.This campaign will really help sell Andriod phones. I am a long time PRE fan but have to say on adverts alone I certainly wouldn't be choosing the Palm Pre.
Here is just one of the many positive comments about the latest driod advert
"awesome.
and those old cowboys are so going to get eaten by the phone!"
I also love the first iDont advert :-) A direct swipe at Apple and it worked. Just text on a white screen (you can't get cheaper than that Palm!)
On an associated note both the Apple and Palm are beginning to look old compared to Andriod and even Windows Mobile has a killer device with a decent skin (though on one device only).
Has anyone seen the HTC HD2 (Leo).
I am buying this 1GHz capacity 4.3 inch screen wonder
Then I'll wait for the second version of the Pre. I wanted so deparately to but the Pre and support Palm but I need a decent PIM and Palm hasn't done enough for it not to significantly annoy me daily.
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