3Com May Expand Its Controversial PalmPilot Campaign
Santa Clara, California, April 5 (Bloomberg) -- 3Com Corp., the No. 2 maker of computer-networking
equipment, said it may expand its controversial advertising campaign for the latest PalmPilot product
to television from print and outdoor media.
Some of the ads, which are appearing on the Internet, in newspapers and on billboards around the
world, feature a naked woman holding the Palm V. They have prompted protests and several parody
Internet sites.
The PalmPilot is 3Com's market-leading hand-held computer, which accounted for about 10 percent of
the company's $1.41 billion in sales for the quarter ended Feb. 26. The controversy surrounding the
spots for the Palm V likely will spur interest in the new product, as 3Com cuts prices on older Palms
amid competition from rivals like Casio Computer Co. Ltd. and Royal Philips Electronics NV. ''Any time
you use a big naked lady in your ads, you're going to get attention,'' said Chris Cornyn, president of
Cornyn Partners, a San Francisco advertising firm.
The spot features a woman seated with knees drawn to her chest, holding a Palm. The ad copy reads,
''Simply Palm.'' While the woman is naked, she is positioned so that the front of her body is covered.
The ad campaign was created by Foote Cone & Belding, one of San Francisco's largest agencies, and
New York-based portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
Greenfield-Sanders is a PalmPilot user, said Liz Brookings, director of marketing communication at
Palm Computing. He has taken portraits of U.S. President Bill Clinton, First Lady Hillary Rodham
Clinton and rock musician Lou Reed, and took the photo used on the jacket of Monica Lewinsky's book.
3Com 'Surprised'
Brookings said the company is ''surprised by some of the inflamed remarks'' it has received by phone
and e-mail from people upset about the ads. ''We are not objectifying or exploiting females,'' said
Brookings. Most of the people involved in the creation and approval of the campaign were women, she
said.
The spot was created to ''use the human body as an art form to call attention to the simple, elegant
design of the Palm,'' Brookings said.
The company has gotten complaints from several different groups, including ''cultures that are not
used to seeing the body uncovered, people who are having a hard time explaining them (the ads) to
children'' and ''extreme feminists,'' she said.
The Palm line is the fastest-selling computing device in history, with more than 3 million units sold
since it was introduced in early 1996, 3Com spokeswoman Elizabeth Cardinale said.
Brooking declined to say how much 3Com is spending on the ad campaign. The company will decide in
coming months whether to expand the campaign to television, she said. ''Maybe that's when we'll have
the male nude,'' she said, laughing. ''Think-Different'' Envy
Brookings confirmed that 3Com sent a letter to an individual who parodied the ads, asking him to
remove images of the Palm from his Internet site.
A visit to the site showed that the individual had complied with the request, yet the site still had links
to several other sites which contained pictures of the PalmPilot with photographs of nude women in
provocative poses. ''His modifications (to the Palm ads) were inappropriate,'' Brookings said.
Cornyn said the Palm ads appear to be modeled after the successful ''Think different'' campaign which
Apple Computer Inc. has used during its financial turnaround.
The spots were going for a simple design, said Cornyn, who called 3Com's ads ''beautiful,'' but not as
effective as Apple's. ''They have 'Think-different' envy,'' he said.
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