Actually, Atari Corp. was HEAVILY advertised back in the early 80's with the 2600's and the 8-bits back when it was owned by Warner Communications, just before Sam Tramiel bought the company from them. Sam was famous for being the guy that got the Commodore 64 out there and sold by-word-of-mouth... and once he bought Atari, he thought he could do the same. For a little while it worked, too. He turned the Atari 800XL/65XL/1200X line of products around from a chunky brown and beige device to a gray slant-slotted beautiful pieces of the 130XE/65XE/XEGS lines. It got advertising so some degree too, but once he handed the company over to his family (Jack Tramiel, famously) they ruined it by absolutely and COMPLETELY trying to run it by word-of-mouth and didn't even bother to support and listen to customers.

I remember a lot of that very personally and first-hand. I went to the AtariFests and I got to speak with the guys that worked there, including their spokesperson toward the end, Bob Brodie. Some of the same things were already happening here with Nokia. I saw it coming. Elop was unexpected to me, though. The previous stuff was like trying to drown a man with gasoline--Elop was like an unexpected passerby that sees it and happily whips out a match to light the drowning man on fire.