I’m rooting for the new Palm Pre. I get nervous when I see more hype or buzz than anything else about a product as it launches. Present a great product as a revolutionary life-changing product and you may kill it. That’s why I try to practice balancing realistic expectations and buzz.
Palm is hyping the crap out of the Pre. Countdowns, sexy spinning images of the product and over-produced video demos. Careful fellas (ladies too)! By all measures the Pre is a great phone. I owned one of the first Palm Treos and liked it very much. I own an HTC Touch Pro and am very happy with it. Both great phones. But if you had hyped either product as “touched by God,” I would have been disappointed.
My advice to Palm: get information out about the Pre, lots of it. Set expectations. Educate people in addition to getting them excited.
We’re in the middel of launching a great new Plantronics wireless headset for a Plantronics distributor Headsets Direct. The Savi WO100. Terrific product: let’s you take land line and VoIP calls on the same headset; longer wireless range; simple to install; solid sound quality. My inclination is to hype the daylights out of it because it really is a great product (it’s replacing two of my headsets). I hope I stop well short of the “touched by God” expectation. If I do, we’ll probably sell more of them.
