To grow, Skype needs to advertise: and NOT mainly on price

In light of (or should that be in the darkness of) Skype's executive-level and financial quakes this week, I have been awaiting Skype Journal's thought-leadership on the issue.

Jim starts out by naming what he views as Skype's five core strengths: a brand name, keen and eager developer and product management communities; new products in development; passionate business partnerships, and a range of platforms.

So with all those assets in tow, what's the problem?

Jim's view is that as of yet, Skype has not yet shown they are fluent marketers to end users. That'd be consumers.

A key point here that I agree with: Skype is very good at viral marketing, but not at mass marketing.

Jim writes:

Viral marketing can only take a business so far; going from 200 million to 1 billion users requires focus, very public visibility, user education and marketing discipline. At this point it is not a case of not having the technology and tools for real time conversations, it is a matter of educating business managers and consumers with what they can do with Skype. It is not a matter of offering "free" long distance; it is a matter of delivering value-add by enhancing real time conversations for more effective personal and business communications

What Jim seems to be implying is that more marketing efforts should be made to consumers and small businesses on how Skype can help them in their lives. As important, the marketing should not focus exclusively, or even predominantly, on how cheap Skype calls are.

So I am wondering, would it hurt Skype to advertise in outlets that reach mainstream Americans? I mean, if Vonage could afford prime time advertising campaigns, couldn't Skype and by extension their owner, eBay do the same?