Creator of Palm Pre commercials puts pipe down long enough to defend his work

By on Aug 3, 2009 at 2:56 PM
Opinions August 3, 2009

We were pretty clear in sharing our feelings where Palm’s Pre commercials are concerned but just in case our headline wasn’t clear enough for you, we don’t like them. In a nutshell, they make us want to curl up in a corner and cry, not run out and buy a Pre. Gary Koepke is the co-founder of Modernista, the agency behind the ads, and he recently defended his work in an interview with AdAge:

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. 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.

It’s a very different look and feel for this sector. There’s nobody involved in an iPhone ad, and ‘Your life is on BlackBerry’ — isn’t that great? Instead of having a life? We wanted a middle ground between those two places — what about the people who want a really great smartphone?

Fair enough, sir, but allow us to reiterate our stance in the context of the second portion of the quote above. Putting our “Joe Consumer” hat on for a moment, when we see an iPhone ad on TV, we walk away thinking ‘cool, the iPhone can do tons of great stuff because it has so many sweet apps’. When we see a BlackBerry commercial (aside from the horrible U2 spot), we walk away thinking ‘ok, BlackBerry rocks the business world but it can hang in the consumer market, too. It does it all’. When we see a Pre commercial, we walk away thinking ‘crack’.

But let’s face it — money talks. Television advertising exists to drive sales and if Pre sales to date were anything to write home about, Sprint and Palm would have thrown out some numbers by now. With the top two smartphone brands in the US doing gangbusters — BlackBerrys are still burning up the market and Apple hawked over 5 million iPhones last quarter — it’s no wonder they’re keeping quiet.

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  • PhysicalMediaRIP

    Oh, and I can’t help but point this out time and time again: The #1 phone before the iPhone that everyone and your grandmother had simply because it was the “it” phone and people thought it was so cool until quality control went to crap and everyone realized it was a junk toy:

    The Motorola Razr.

    So yeah, 5 million sold doesn’t mean anything to me other than Apple has made a lot of money lately.

  • Scott

    @PhysicalMediaRIP,

    Good movie BTW

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone) at: Tempe United States

  • W1LD5TYL3

    The Palm Pre ads are hideous! Where is the woman at anyways… Mars. Seems like a lackluster attempt at being ‘creative’. -1 Palm.

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Anon Imus

    This guy Gary doesn’t need to defend his work.
    The guys at Palm who said “OK these spots are acceptable” need to defend their jobs!
    Gary’s probably real good at selling BS (:

    Wish I could sell one of my hair-brained schemes

  • Jensen Chamberlin

    Agent Smith, go back to your sidekicks you stupid piece of sh!t

  • giantslor

    These commercials aren’t creepy. Eraserhead is creepy.

  • witter

    Them shits suck

  • http://www.webstudio914.com/web.htm galvatron

    the actress is Canadian that’s why you’ve never heard of her. lol eraser head that’s a bit cruel lol the cgi in the background doesn’t roll wel with her maybye a darker setting. she’s more albino than me lol she looks like she can glow in the dark an make folks want to call the ghost-busters. they should have paid keifer southerland a few hundere thousand that would seel it right there notice how just about evy season since 5 they start placing palm handheld’s with sprint?

  • Andy

    I was watching TV the other night, and the Pre commercial started while my 7yr old daughter was walking past. She took one look, and said “That lady is scary.” And she kept walking.

    I wonder if the Pre ad guy was simply enamored with the look (effects, style) of the ad and was blinded by that.

  • NL

    The ads are PERFECT for the Pre market — busy women.

    Just go to a whole foods and look a the magazine rack at checkout! The yoga and health magazines have women like this in serene settings. It is an ideal for WOMEN.

    Pre is a CHICK phone for goodness sakes! Look even at the original product placements with “celebrities: All WOMEN (and “b-list” too).

  • me

    well, you just destroyed your whole argument openly admitting you dont have the creditials to speak about advertising. If i no nothing about pasteurizing milk how can i tell someone how to pasteurize milk? this goes for anything.. if you have no idea what your talking about.. shut up. It was obviously affective enough to inspire tens of web blogs and countless satires on youtube. which in turn is smart. because all of this and the youtube stuff is free advertising for the palm pre. congradulations you work for palm now. haha

  • Jeff

    Explains why they fired their former CMO and just hired a new SVP of Marketing… ;-)
    You think that guy will do some house cleaning?

    Palm, wtf were you guys thinking? Fire your advertising team and hire some more Apple folks that got it down.

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