T’is the season for a new twist on Santa.
Credit should be given to Palm centro for the transformative effect their phone has on Santa Claus. Our traditional Santa discovers the Palm centro smartphone and apparently a whole new world is opened up for him. He cuts his hair, ditches the shabby suit and antiquated sleigh and becomes a hip (hop) character named Claus (which rhymes with “blouse”), smartly dressed in a designer suit traveling to places warm and sunny – far away from the North Pole – which he easily finds using his GPS navigation app on his centro (and presumably a little magic).
There are a lot of spots in this campaign, each supporting a key feature of the smartphone from music to photos. For example, the Rooftop DJ spot opens with Claus in front of an enraptured circle of young people where he’s discussing his amazement that he can keep his “list” on the centro rather than those “big parchment scrolls.” Claus, where the hell have you been for the last 12 years? I mean, didn’t you deliver the original Palm Pilot 1000 and Pilot 5000 to tech geeks everywhere for Christmas between 1996 and 1999?
He’s likeable, this Claus character, although I prefer the fat, jolly old man Coca Cola made famous; or at least the tech savvy version of Santa in his Grotto managing his naughty and nice list on his IBM ThinkPad – a brilliant print execution created by Ogilvy & Mather in the ‘90s. (If anyone has the jpg of that ad, please post it).
This campaign, however, is not that well executed online. If you search “Palm centro”, for example, you don’t get a link to the official campaign site (http://www.palm.com/claus/). The organic results direct you to people like me blogging about the campaign – and it’s not all good. There’s no paid search results that I have seen. Why spend all this money on television and not add a little more to the place where people will ultimately go to form an opinion about this device. Seems really short sighted.
Claus has his own Facebook page too with just over 1,600 friends (http://www.facebook.com/claus). For all of the advertising money being spent, I would have hoped for at least another zero, if not two. That would be a better Christmas present for the brand manager and the agency. Even worse, if you search “Santa Claus Centro” in Facebook, you find some rather pornographic groups based in Santiago, Chile who apparently like to show their raw materials.
Palm did a great job with the narrative hook on this one, but they haven’t detailed the threads too well. Beyond the ads, this story falls flat. And even at $49.99, I’m not sure it will deliver what I am sure Palm wants for Christmas – sales in a very competitive iPhone dominated space. I’m keeping my eye on the Blackberry Storm, thanks.
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