Advertising Is Mostly Done by the Carriers

Handsprings primary advertising strategy is to help the wireless phone carriers communicate the benefits of the Treo to their customers. The bulk of the advertising is actually done by the carriers. The Treo is a unique product, and the carriers often include it in their advertising to motivate consumers to sign up for their wireless phone service. In some cases Handspring runs additional advertising in newspapers and on radio to get people into stores to see a demonstration of the Treo. Handspring believes that once people try the Treo and start using the keyboard, they will want to take it home with them.

Handspring believes that consumers are motivated to sign up for a new wireless service by seeing something tangible that is unique. The Treo is just such a unique tangible device. Handspring therefore prepares mock-up advertisements and point-of-purchase material to give the carriers examples of how they might communicate the benefits to customers of using a Treo with their particular wireless service. Naturally the final advertising strategy is created by the carriers because they are the ones running the advertising.

A recent Sprint advertising campaign provides a good example of Treo advertising. Sprint spent a lot of money advertising the Treo and one of its key services, the PCS Business Connection, which is an e-mail solution. The Treo model advertised was optimized for that service. Sprint placed ads in Time, Newsweek, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. These ads told people about Sprints Business Connection services and showed a Treo as an example of an ideal product for this service.