PacketVideo, a wireless audio and video software manufacturer, launched its first advertising campaign earlier this month in an effort to establish branding for PVPlatform.
The product, which launches Aug. 14, enables wireless content companies to deliver audio and video content on wireless personal digital assistant devices. The software is available free to consumers, who can download it to their wireless devices from the company's Web site, www.packetvideo.com/update.
The company initially ran an ad in The Wall Street Journal and will run ads in Business Week, Red Herring, Global Wireless Magazine and Radio Communications Report. The ad features a picture of a PDA device displaying a video image of a space shuttle launch followed by the tag line: “The screen may be small, but the future is huge.”
PacketVideo plans to run the print campaign through year-end. The company may look to other media next year. Its ad campaign was created inhouse.
Anjeanette Rettig, spokeswoman at PacketVideo, San Diego, CA, said PacketVideo's ad campaign is designed to target the investment community in an attempt to get additional funding and potential wireless partners, such as service providers, device manufacturers and content companies. The company signed a deal with Casio Computer Co. to embed the software into the Cassiopeia wireless device. It also signed a similar agreement with Compaq Computer Corp. for its iPaq wireless device.
PacketVideo has also signed agreements with two wireless service providers, Finland's Sonera, and Sunday, in Hong Kong. It has signed content deals with Warner Bros., Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment and AtomFilms. Rettig declined to name any of the company's 35 remaining new partners.
Rettig claimed the company has not yet encountered any competition.
“I guess the good news is we haven't lost a deal yet,” said Rettig, who would not disclose sales goals for the newly launched product.
CEO James Carol, a former senior sales executive at Motorola, and president and chief technological officer James Brailean, former head of Motorola's Advanced Video Algorithms Group, established PacketVideo two years ago.
The company has received more than $37 million in funding from Credit Suisse First Boston, Intel Capital, Nexus Group LLC, Philips, Qualcomm Inc., Siemens Mustang Ventures, Sonera, Sony Corp. of America, Texas Instruments and Time Warner.
