This week, palmOne has launched its first nationwide advertising program in three years.  The advertising campaign represents the first such multi-million dollar investment for PalmOne since 2001. 

Handspring, Inc, the company originally responsible for creating the Treo 600 that was acquired by PalmOne in 2004, spent about two million dollars to advertise the 600.  Mytreo.net expects this campain to significantly exceed Handspring’s marketing effort and to be highly concentrated in coming months.

Monday, Nov. 22, was the official launch date for the television ads, which will run through December.  Advertisements include spots for the best-selling Tungsten E and the company’s flagship line of Treo 600 and 650 smartphones.  According to PalmOne, television advertisements will coordinate with a national print campaign kicked off earlier this month and a similarly themed airport ad campaign that has been running for the better part of this year.

In an interview with mytreo.net (check back here for a transcript), PalmOne marketing executives indicated that they are targeting travellers, business users and enterprise customers.  The television spots are fifteen seconds long and "book-end" commercial segments in television shows, falling immediately after shows cut to commercial and immediately before shows return from commercials.  The advertisements focus on the way a user’s life is transformed by the products, and highlights internet and email capabilities, word processing and spreadsheet applications, and other subject matters interesting to a typical business consumer.

PalmOne also opened its first-ever Treo smartphone store (click here for details) on Monday, Nov. 22, in the Valley Fair mall, San Jose, California.  Sales through existing palmOne Retail Stores grew nearly 600 percent year-over-year.  PalmOne hopes the Treo smartphone line can capitalize on a continuation of the company’s success in its own retail outlets.  As we enter the busiest shopping season of the year, PalmOne clearly hopes to benefit from high traffic in the mall-based retail stores.

On a side note, in an American West airlines test program, PalmOne is advertising on meal trays.  Kudos to PalmOne for also entering a float in the Philadelphia Thanksgiving Day parade.

Click here to comment on this article.

Filed under: Treo and Palm news