I think she’s a Long Island debutante from 1954 who dropped into a wormhole and wound up in an ad campaign. She’s got a Packard convertible with red leather seats just out of camera range, and a Brittany spaniel named Suzette.
I also thought she is nice looking and her voice was okay, but I must admit the one where she talks about a juggler is definitely creepy. I couldn’t tell if she thought the juggler was “cool” or if the juggler was “tasty”.
I don’t find the actress to be overly creepy…it’s something about the commercial’s lighting that makes things just seem wrong. Put her in a ‘normal’ commercial, and everything would be OK (even if she’s talking about jugglers).
No cite, but I read an interview w/ the CEO or somebody of Palm that said that their goal was to creep people out a bit with those ads.
Well, someone get that guy an aircraft carrier and a jump suit: Mission accomplished.
The word I associate with her in those ads is “ethereal”. She does have a very other-worldly, angelic, futuristic quality to her. Put me down on the (apparently less popular) side of finding her attractive.
J.
Perhaps people are confused that she isn’t acting like a sex kitten or housewife.
I think she’s gorgeous.
Palm is in trouble so the thought is if the Pre bombs they may not survive. Sprint is not doing that great either, there is talk they might get bought by the parent company of T-Mobile.
Someone needs to fill in her eyebrows. Or have them dyed or something–they’re way too pale. Well, in real life, I mean–the creature that she plays in the ads needs to be driven out of town by torch bearing villagers.
This is probably what they were going for, particularly the “futuristic” feel. She does have that Tilda Swinton kind of hotness and she comes across as intelligent, but it’s the lack of genuine exuberance when talking about the juggler that makes me think her skin will split away and we’ll discover she’s really an android underneath. Like, if she laughed, that would have been super-hot. Instead, she came across as emotionally flat, which was creepy.
I used to wonder what Martha Stewart was really like when she dropped that constrained, measured facade. I mean, doesn’t everyone have those moments when you’re laughing so hard that tears are rolling down your face, you forget what you look like and what the world thinks of you? Well, after so many years, I’m starting to think Martha really is like she presents herself. The most you will ever get from her is a polite chuckle.
I’m not willing to write off the girl in the Palm ads just yet. Behind the scenes, hair down, when she’s not reading words that have been vetted by an ad agency, she could very easily be a babe.
3 way with her & Flo from Progressive. 'Nuff said.
Count me in as one of their target audience because I find her hypnotically attractive. I often stop forwarding through commercials when I see this ad and sometimes I will rewind and play it again. There is just something about her look and voice that pushes a button in my brain.
NOOO!!! Say it isn’t so! I like Sprint. I don’t want to be with TMo again.
OK, I’ve watched a bunch of the ads with her now, with sound. Definitely hot, even less creepy (I was worried she’d have a robotic voice, but she just has a sexy one). She sounds Canadian.
Um, why? Who in their right mind would think that deliberately creeping people out would help to sell your product? Unless the product is a horror movie or Halloween decoration, of course. Just makes no sense when selling a cell phone.
To me, she doesn’t really creep me out so much as just totally turn me off. She’s stiff and sterile, she has a kind of schoolmarm look with that tightly pulled back hair, her delivery of the lines is almost robotic, and she gives off a completely cold and off-putting vibe. All of her ads make me want to do almost anything OTHER than buy the product she’s selling.
Take her hair down and have her talk in, ya know, like, a conversational manner, and I think the ads would actually help to sell the product, instead of the opposite.
Then in Palm’s shoes I would have reconsidered the exclusivity deal with Sprint (and I would not have left Garnet lie abandoned for five years, but that’s water under the bridge). I myself WAS trying to hold out to see if WebOS was worth it to stay with the Palm brand for migrating to a smartphone, but like heck I’m going over to Sprint just for the gadget. The Pre (and for that matter the G1) is no iPhone, it does not generate the sort of mad technolust that makes people change carriers. The exclusivity looks to me like Palm would lose time to try and lure whatever die-hards may be left with Centros, Treos and T/Xs reaching end-of-life,but who are uninterested in Sprint.
And the ads are not creepy, really, her delivery is kind of overly aethereal but it causes me no discomfort.
So let’s see, Windows is a dorky, chubby office square, and Mac OS is a chillin’ sort of artsy but levelheaded hipster, and WebOS is… the quiet smart girl who’s at a lot of poetry readings and foreign-film fests and every now and then hits you with an observation that leaves you thinking that must have been deep because you didn’t get it?
Ah, but you remember the ad, don’t you? Mission accomplished.
She strikes me as sort of vacant, rather than ethereal. Which is probably not quite what they were going for.
I’d never heard of the Palm Pre before this thread, so, I guess their ads resulted in a small amount of brand awareness.
Anyway, I don’t find the actress creepy, but she happens to look almost exactly like my younger sister, so maybe I just got over the creepiness a long time ago.