Years ago, Palm CEO Ed Colligan coined the term ‘mobile accomplisher,’ meant to describe the type of folks that used Palm’s PDAs and smartphones. Today, Colligan and the gang are gone and Palm is now owned by HP, and it’s time for a new advertising campaign: the mobile expressionists.

Palm is reaching out to webOS developers to feature their works in a new marketing campaign focusing on ‘mobile expressionism.’ What is that, you ask? As Palm explained in an email to developers, the mobile expressionist is the innovative and artistic developer, many of whom were just honored with our Best of 2010 Awards. Palm is looking to feature these developers in success stories and even short documentaries to be advertised on ‘developer and tech web sites.’

While Palm isn’t direct about their intent, the purpose behind this campaign is made clear by the targeted websites: getting more developers on board with webOS. Applications are the key to any modern smartphone platform, and the relatively low number of webOS apps (at least in comparison to the oodles available to iOS and Android users) was part of Palm’s downfall. By targeting the sites that mobile developers frequent, Palm is hoping to convince more of them to ‘join the movement.’ We can think of more than a few webOS developers that would be perfect for this kind of campaign.

Source: Palm, Via: webOSroundup

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CES 2011 is just a few weeks away, and we’re all assuming (and hoping) that Palm announces some awesome new devices to replace the aging hardware that’s out there right now. At this point, given the current marketshare numbers, what might be needed more than the new hardware is a new consumer mindset pertaining to Palm.

According to the latest numbers from Nielsen, Palm’s marketshare stands at a paltry 1.3% in the United States, and we’d reason that international marketshare is around that, if not lower in countries where Palm products are even available.

With Palm’s market penetration so low, the question weighing heavily on our minds right now is how do Palm and HP turn around their fortunes with webOS – especially if we need to wait some time for new hardware? The answer lies not with rebuilding marketshare. No, the answer is to reboot the public perception and start over. webOS is a fantastic operating system, but it was already fighting an uphill battle against iOS when it launched, and has since been eclipsed by Android and is facing competition for the bottom rung from, of all companies, Microsoft with their turn-the-smartphone-OS-on-its-ear Windows Phone 7.

In this mess of smartphone operating systems, how is Palm to differentiate itself and make the case for why Joe Consumer should buy a webOS phone over an iPhone or Droid? Reboot, reset, and start over. Palm needs to be aggressive with their advertising. It can’t be “We’re still here.” No, the message must be “We are here. This is why we’re awesome.”

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 Though it can be had for free on a two-year agreement on the US’s largest wireless carrier (or even bundled with a laptop or with a $50 gift card from Palm’s new parent company), AT&T is still actively advertising the diminutive handset in mailing campaigns across the country.  The latest evidence of this comes way of PreCentral reader orawas who spotted the above ad in WVU’s student newspaper.  It does make sense that Palm and AT&T would target the student demographic; the Pixi is probably one of the best portrait QWERTY smartphones in the "free" category.

Have you seen any direct mail advertising from Palm/AT&T

Thanks, orawas!

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Mobile advertising specialist firm AdMob (soon to be gobbled up by Google) has put out their March 2010 report, which paints a steady picture for Palm, and a rocket-ride for Android. Let’s get the big news out of the way up front: AdMob’s ad requests for Android phones have eclipsed those from the iPhone OS. There are a number of factors to consider in the numbers that may or may not validate the newfound dominance of Android (46% share vs. 39% for iPhone OS), but it’s still a surprising number.

On the sidelines, however, is Palm. Worldwide marketshare and US marketshare remain essentially unchanged. In the US the Pre accounted for 2.4% of AdMob’s ad requests, a tick up of 0.1% from their February report. Granted, for the Pre a 0.1% rise in overall marketshare equates to a 4.3% increase in traffic from the previous month, so it’s not all bad. But bumps of a tenth of a percent in US marketshare aren’t going to sustain Palm, especially when your devices don’t even make an appearance on the charts for other regions. Still, it’s better to have made minuscule gains than to be giving up ground, right? What we’re looking forward to is the reports for April and May, which will hopefully show the positive effects on increased promotions and price cutting at Verizon and Sprint, and the launch of the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus on O2 and Vodafone in Europe.

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New York, New York…

Our man Neil sent us this photo of a Palm billboard going up in the bustling advertising Mecca that is Times Square, New York City. As best as we can tell, this billboard is a good thirty feet high and some 60 feet wide, so it’s friggin’ huge and will seem enormous that close to the ground. As you can see, this is part of Palm’s new “Life moves fast, don’t miss a thing” campaign that has seen outdoor advertisements all across the United States and has made the jump to television.

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If you’ve watched any TV in the last week you’ve probably seen an ad for the Palm Pre Plus on Verizon, and maybe even one for the Pixi Plus. But TV land isn’t the only place you’ll see Palm gear advertised – as we saw earlier in the week with the Pixi Plus Verizon BOGO ad destined for a weekly newspaper. Newspapers are old media, baby. Signs on the street are where it’s at these days, with people walking around their cities and stuff. As such, we’ve received shots from around the country of reader running into Palm and Verizon advertising for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus. It’s in office towers, its at bus stops, and its in art festivals… in Miami!

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Finally, Verizon wireless is advertising the Palm Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, that’s great news for us webOS followers. But for some reason the carrier wants to enlist our Moms to the webOS platform, saying that these two smartphones are “smart enough for Mom” (see image below).

Now don’t get me wrong here, I really [...]

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Verizon is finally advertising the Palm Pre Plus. This time around Palm and Verizon decided that rather than give you the creeps directly, they’ll give you the creeps by scaring you with visions of the past.

We like the target market here, but, well, "The 3G smartphone smart enough for mom" is completely true, accurate, but perhaps a little too …direct? Swing of the pendulum, we guess: instead of a vague, hazy brand message we get "buy this for your mom." Roger that, will do, and she’ll like it. She may not like the stereotype, though, even if it is presented just to be shoved aside by the Pre Plus.

Women (and especially moms): What do you think?

One more commercial after the break, thanks to windzilla for the tip!

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While it was Jon Rubinstein’s job to play Palm’s Chief Optimism Officer as well as CEO during yesterday’s financial conference call, analysts and investors alike have picked apart his and CFO Doug Jefferies’ comments and don’t like some of what was said. In fact, investors liked it so little that the stock opened Friday trading down more than 10% from Thursday’s pre-conference call close of $11.72. From the opening bell investors never looked back, with Palm closing today’s trading down a stunning 13%. Today marked the first time in nearly eight months since Palm’s share price dropped below $10, though it ended the day at $10.17, a drop of 44% from its 52-week high of $18.09 at the end of September. At one point during the day Palm traded as low as $9.60.

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[YouTube Link]

Here you go, folks, Palm’s new ad campaign for the Pixi, or at least the first commercial in it.  They’ll start airing it Monday, the day after the Pixi launch. We’re digging the overall concept of your social life getting enabled by your phone, digging that they give Tweed some face time, and digging that they’ve replaced ‘creepy’ with ‘fun.’ Definitely a new direction from the previous ads and though we will miss some the esoteric charm of the old ads, this feels more human.

If you’re digging the music, you should know that it’s "Sleepyhead" by Passion Pit. So, what do you think, will it work for Palm? More importantly, will it bring on those new smartphone users Palm is targeting with the Pixi??

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