Gotta say, the initial "power without the price" tact seemed initially effective, at least until Commodore trotted out the Amiga 500, which rendered Atari's argument null and void.
That said, neither Atari or Commodore had much of a shot - Apple barely made a blip and Atari/Commodore fought for the consumer/gamer/budget oriented home market while the whole world was slowly adopting MS-DOS because of the cheap clones.
I still think the fact that Jack got Atari with a functional, complete and damned good product in the ST line so quickly speaks volumes to the man's ability to get things done.
A topic for another article, but "Power without the Price" slogan was so good that Atari became synonymous with low-priced computers. This really hurt Atari when they wanted to introduce more expensive gear, such as the Mega and TT. And I agree, their price advantage did largely disappear when the Amiga 500 was introduced.
Though I only remember seeing them in Atari's own magazine so I am not sure how much reach it actually had 🫤. I don't remember ever seeing a print ad for the STes, TT or Falcon.
I had some marketing for the Mega STe taped to my dorm room wall. I got a flyer for it at a local user group meeting. It was on nice slick paper. I can't find this ad now. It was the model I eventually got at a local mom & pop store that was close to campus.
I didn't learn about this until watching one of the online histories re. Atari, but I think a reason the marketing budget dropped off was that Atari/Tramiel had trouble getting their computers into retail outlets in the U.S. What I've heard is that after their experience with Jack Tramiel when he was at Commodore, they didn't want to do business with him anymore! Wow. So, the only choice Atari really had was to sell through mom & pop's and mail order. It seems to me this would help explain why the sales of the ST were not as large, as a proportion of the total market, as with the 8-bits when Atari was owned by Warner. I always heard Atari was much more successful in the UK and Europe with the ST. It seems it was the same story for Commodore with the Amiga.
I still remember when I took a trip to the UK in 1999, walking into an internet cafe and seeing a shelf unit along one of the walls packed full of Atari 520/1040STs and Amiga 500s that locals had given away. As I remember, the shop owner offered them as free take-aways to anyone who wanted them. I didn't take him up on it, as I had already moved on to a Windows PC (I guess like everyone else), but seeing that was both a pleasant surprise, and shocking. I never saw such a stash in the U.S.
Gotta say, the initial "power without the price" tact seemed initially effective, at least until Commodore trotted out the Amiga 500, which rendered Atari's argument null and void.
That said, neither Atari or Commodore had much of a shot - Apple barely made a blip and Atari/Commodore fought for the consumer/gamer/budget oriented home market while the whole world was slowly adopting MS-DOS because of the cheap clones.
I still think the fact that Jack got Atari with a functional, complete and damned good product in the ST line so quickly speaks volumes to the man's ability to get things done.
A topic for another article, but "Power without the Price" slogan was so good that Atari became synonymous with low-priced computers. This really hurt Atari when they wanted to introduce more expensive gear, such as the Mega and TT. And I agree, their price advantage did largely disappear when the Amiga 500 was introduced.
There was an ad in Compute! magazine by JS&A Associates that preceded these ads and what got me as a customer in the late summer of 1986.
I remember seeing these ads for the Mega ST:
https://archive.org/details/Atari_Explorer_Volume_8_Number_4_1988-08_Atari_Explorer_Publications_US/page/n19/mode/2up
Though I only remember seeing them in Atari's own magazine so I am not sure how much reach it actually had 🫤. I don't remember ever seeing a print ad for the STes, TT or Falcon.
Yeah, seemed weird for Atari to advertise in their own Atari magazine, but I guess it was the definition of "free advertising".
I had some marketing for the Mega STe taped to my dorm room wall. I got a flyer for it at a local user group meeting. It was on nice slick paper. I can't find this ad now. It was the model I eventually got at a local mom & pop store that was close to campus.
I didn't learn about this until watching one of the online histories re. Atari, but I think a reason the marketing budget dropped off was that Atari/Tramiel had trouble getting their computers into retail outlets in the U.S. What I've heard is that after their experience with Jack Tramiel when he was at Commodore, they didn't want to do business with him anymore! Wow. So, the only choice Atari really had was to sell through mom & pop's and mail order. It seems to me this would help explain why the sales of the ST were not as large, as a proportion of the total market, as with the 8-bits when Atari was owned by Warner. I always heard Atari was much more successful in the UK and Europe with the ST. It seems it was the same story for Commodore with the Amiga.
I still remember when I took a trip to the UK in 1999, walking into an internet cafe and seeing a shelf unit along one of the walls packed full of Atari 520/1040STs and Amiga 500s that locals had given away. As I remember, the shop owner offered them as free take-aways to anyone who wanted them. I didn't take him up on it, as I had already moved on to a Windows PC (I guess like everyone else), but seeing that was both a pleasant surprise, and shocking. I never saw such a stash in the U.S.