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Maketing 101?

I recently saw a video on you tube which totally trashed Palm Pre. This video was from none other than YouTube starlet ijustine. For those of you who don't know who she is, she is the poor man's Paris Hilton! She starts off by saying how Pre is a pathetic excuse of a competition to iPhone. The she pretends to go shopping for one in Best Buy. Now best buy as we all know, is not a primary phone or phone connections seller and most often than not don't carry a working model. Well that is enough reason for ijustine to start rambling about poor marketing by palm Inc etc... Then she goes to a sprint store and starts talking about how iPhone had a huge line of people braving the cold and rain to buy iPhone. In comparison there is not much fanfare for pre. You might be wondering why the heck am I writing about her video.
Well, the video was so compelling that most of the viewers would have given up the idea of buying a pre and would have felt a sense of failure for not having gone for the cool iPhone.My blog is an effort to highlight some issues with ijustine's tirade.
1) ijustine is not a technical expert to review any device. I believe she doesn't know the difference between a TV and computer.
2) She doesn't have a Sprint connection . Then why the heck is she buying pre?
3) The video looks more like an iPhone advertisement then pre review.
4) All through the video she never once held a working palm pre in her hand nor do we see any.

This I believe is a classic example of stealth marketing by Apple. What is stealth marketing?
Say a company wants to sell a video game. what better way to market it than word of mouth! So they hire an average Joe to sit in a busy cafe or any public place and play the game. And more often than not when we see a guy/girl totally engrossed in something and it appears enjoyable, our curiosity get the better of us. Eventually someone will ask the stealth marketer what it is..and from there the marketing begins!

I believe ijustine is on Apple pay roll. Apple's iPhone is a very impressive product, but it is also one of the most restricted (in terms of music/app authoring etc) platforms. Open source is the wave of the future. I agree that Palm has still a lot of catching up to do but @ $80 with a 2 year all inclusive (data and other happy cr@p) sprint contract which costs about $55 /month, it is by far the most valuable option. With that I will rest my case.

Disclaimer: This is not an ad for Palm or Sprint.

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