Comments on: Palm Debuts New Commercial for the Pre

Yeah. I'm the type of person this type of ad should connect with, and the first thing I thought of was me, out in the woods, standing on a rock, trying to get reception.

Been there, done that.

Is the Pre even coming to China? Do Americans want to buy Made-in-China stuff right now?

And why would Palm spend a large advertising budget on this? Don't they need to conserve their resources, given that they can only afford to produce a few phones for the official launch?

I liked the concept. I could've done more with the same resources, which only speaks to how poorly it was choreographed. If you watch the making of video that follows, they make some comment about circles representing multitasking, or something like that? Like huh? First off, 99% of people don't know what multitasking is on a computer, if they did, they don't care that much, AND nothing in the choreography gave me the impression of multitasking anyhow.

Would've been much better if they'd morphed between common Internet icons: e-mail, web, phone, etc. then end with the Palm logo. Plus there's a huge disconnect between the girl in the center and everyone else, which does not imply synergy to me, I'm sure I could come up with a fix for that too.

Furthermore, it was even more of a turn-off that Palm went to China and hired hundreds of people (from a Chinese military school?) to make this. I was originally speculating CGI, which was a downer enough, this was worse.

That said, it's not bad, it's just not great. They could've done much better.

CFreymarc wrote:
I seeing that metaphore of a bunch of underpaid Chinese who can't vote surrounding and doing the bidding of an obvious westerner being treated like royality? While I'm not usually into the social justice scene, this commercial totally flaunts class abuse.

I generally frown upon any attempt to give the Chinese money (since the money ultimately supports the government). Having said that, I don't think this was about the monks "doing the bidding" of a westerner. One of the problems I had with the ad, in fact, was the fact that the movements of the monks seemed completely unrelated to the phone itself. (Here's a little hint to the people at Palm: If you have to post a paragraph explaining the ad, it's not a good ad.)

As I said, I don't think it sucked. I was just surprised that they'd go with such an ambiguous ad (in terms of what the Pre can do, I mean), rather than go for the jugular with some of the innovative things the phone can actually do, like multitasking, integrating different contact lists, etc. In fact, they already have videos up on the Palm site. Any one of these would've done a better job highlighting the features of the phone than that 7 seconds of camera time they gave the Pre.

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html#video

And the Chinese are not underpaid... it's just that the Americans are over-paid, therefore over-consuming and leading to externalities that affect poor developing countries... I want my Pre even if it means wasteful consumption!!

Jayy wrote:
I want my Pre even if it means wasteful consumption!!

Ok, so at least there was that moment of honesty in there. :-)

Hey Palm! Where's my PDA with Wifi and phone capabilities?

Twock said, "Ok, so at least there was that moment of honesty in there. :-)"

Sorry for not keeping to topic. Twock, I am not trying to diss the American, I am just sick of all the China/Chinese bashing by people who are so very ignorant. I am merely showing counter arguments to some perspectives. I know most PIC readers are American and intelligent enough (based on their posts and comments (no sarcasm intended :))) to know that the pervailing view of the media of China or other cultures are not necessarily truthful... And yes, it is wasteful consumption, that I keep buying every single Palm that comes out hoping that that would be THE PERFECT PDA PHONE!! Actually, I've just given up my Android G1 and moved back to my 680... wow, it's soooooooo much better in terms of usuability!!!

Twrock, the G1 was ok for awhile but once the swish, swash and snap wore off, it's just a phone with lots of alpha, beta ware... Palm on the other hand has lots of well-developed programs which are highly usuable for everyday usage. I toyed with WM, S60 also but none of them come close to Palm (in both hardware and software) when it comes to convergence and simplicity (which is often under-rated and us Palm users sometimes take for granted). The credit to Palm is not meant for Palm OS itself tho but to the (ex) Palm development community. It's true that Android may one day become highly usable but that's the waiting game again... So now, I am just happy with the 680...

jca666us wrote:
Seriously, I thought this commercial was ok - but apple's ads are more effective by showing actual apps. running.

I basically agree with that. Maybe my initial impression was too harsh, but it came across to me like a Calvin Klein fragrance ad.

Incidentally, I know that the use of the word "ad" in relation to the video on Facebook is a little bit of a misnomer, since this video isn't really advertising. (It's just a fan video, because of its venue right now.) Having said that, I do expect them to run something similar on TV, when/if the phone starts to take off after Saturday. It makes sense that their initial production would be Web-only, since it's the techie crowd that will be initially attracted to the phone, and it's probably cheaper than a TV campaign. But sooner or later, they've got to step up and do some TV. The nature of Facebook is that people that don't already know you probably won't get to know you.

Not just you.

Surprising, when you consider that ads are supposed to connect with people - not repel them.