We’ve all seen the evening commercials for the Palm Pre, starring a very calm, almost creepy young woman waxing poetic about stop lights and her day. After watching her for thirty seconds, it s a bit tough to fall asleep because, frankly, she’s a little unsettling.
Click play, if you dare.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you. Creeped out? Then mission accomplished, or so says the creative team behind the commercials.
From Ad Age: {link no longer active} “We weren’t trying to creep people out, but one thing I have learned now in this digital age is people can be as rude as they want as long as they don’t have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,” [Gary Koepke, co-founder and executive creative director at Modernista] 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.”
The old adage is any publicity is good publicity, but does it really pay to try and split your consumer base right down the middle from day one We’re hyper critical of the ad, as we think the Palm Pre is a great phone, but that commercial shows nothing of its features.On a related note, sales of the Palm Pre are looking to stabilize at around 30K units per week after its hot launch period earlier this year. By comparison, iPhone sales in Q2 topped an average of 390K per week.
