In another Marketing blunder, the simple lesson here is – do your homework. Radio personality Howard Stern was given a Palm Pre to test, but the phone failed.
The idea was simple, give Stern the phone to test out at home. Ideal result: he talks about the phone non-stop throughout his radio show given it’s such a great little device. The theory was great and a brilliant marketing ploy through word of mouth. Getting his hand on a demo for the much anticipated Palm Pre, he took to playing with it.
However, like a true phone user, once you get past the shrink wrap you need to sit back and think ‘does this phone meet my needs?’ Answer in this case – no. Stern has reportedly walked away from the Pre choosing a BlackBerry Bold as his next phone due to one (seemingly) simple factor; the Pre does not like Lotus Notes. He has now been talking about BlackBerry constantly meaning that Palm is missing out on all the spoken marketing the man can muster.
[via PhoneArena]
In the spirit of “doing your homework,” I’d like to clear up some inaccuracies that are being reported in this post. Palm did not “give” a Pre to Stern to test–we met with him and gave him a demo. In addition, Palm has worked with Stern for some time, so we were fully aware of his use of Lotus Notes. Stern asked for a demo of the Pre with full knowledge that it is not available yet and does not yet support Lotus Notes. He made his choice based on immediate availability of Lotus Notes, and may consider a Pre when Lotus Notes is up and running on it.
Feel free to call Palm in the future to do your homework and avoid posting misinformation.
Lynn Fox
Palm Corporate Communications