Book Notes: But Wait! There’s More!

February 15th, 2007

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Books The subtitle to this groovy, retro tome is “The Irresistible Appeal and Spiel of Ronco and Popeil”. You may not recognize these names at first, but if you’ve watched any television over the past thirty years, you’ll certainly know some of their products: Showtime Rotisserie Oven, GLH Formula Number 9 Hair System (spray on hair), Ronco Flower Loom, and The Pocket Fisherman.

This is a pop-culture history book, celebrating those strange gadgets perfectly suited for half-asleep, late night television infomercials, when the odds of a impulse buy is supposedly high - or perhaps people dream about the products and awake deciding to buy one after a first cup of coffee.

The Ronco and Popeil products fill a practical need you didn’t know existed. Do you need a kitchen tool to make a spiral french fry out of a potato? Well, after watching Ron Popeil demonstrate one to a constantly clapping studio audience, you might think, yeah, I do.

A long line of the products had eye-catching names, many with the suffix “O-Matic”. You get the Chop-O-Matic (food chopper), the Dial-O-Matic (food slicer for making cross-cut fries), the Veg-O-Matic (slices, wedges, and dices with one stroke), and the Peel-O-Matic (tomato peeler). I suppose “Webomatica” is yet another product in this legacy.

Other products border on the bizarre, such as the Beauty-Rite Plastic Plant-Maker, the Sit-On Trash Compactor, and the Outside-Inside Magnetic Window Washer - essentially two sponges with magnets, tied together with a string, so you could wipe down the outside of a window pane while cleaning the inside. Now available at a thrift store near you, I imagine.

Part of the fun of this book is realizing how much the art of the pitch has stayed essentially the same over the years. Ron Popeil started as a salesman, doing live product demos in department stores. So naturally, with the advent of television, his sales pitches found a national audience. Hence, today’s infomercial could be added to the list of Popeil inventions.

The book contains a pretty good list of pitch tips (note that all of these line up surprisingly well to Steve Jobs’ Mac keynotes - I feel another post coming on):

Location, location, location: Setting up a kitchen item booth near the women’s restrooms guarantees a captive audience.

Build a crowd and hold ‘em: Attracting one or two people is hard, but attracts the next few, and when there’s a crowd of several, even more is guaranteed just to see what the others are watching.

Make the product sound and look indispensable. The gadgets have a basic theme of something useful tweaked to make it even better. There are many “multi-function” ones, such as the steamer with the plastic try on top specifically for vegetables.

Say it again - and again.

The amazing world of superlatives: Pepper the talk with loaded adjectives like “magic,” miracle,” “fantastic.”

Get the audience involved: Ask rhetorical questions, like “isn’t this amazing?”

Asking for the money - the turn: Price is never revealed until the end. First mention a higher price, and then say how low the actual “special” price is. An odd number like “4.89″ sounds much cheaper than a round 5, although the price difference is negligible.

But, wait! There’s more! The bonus product.

Your money back - no questions asked: This offer is given because most likely, the buyer won’t use it.

I mention often that I’m advertising-phobic. I really dislike being asked to buy something, usually because I want to think about things in a logical manner and make purchasing decisions following research - not because I succumbed to some salesman’s pitch. But I can still appreciate the entertainment value of a well-crafted ad. In fact, I find studies of past advertising fascinating, often because with the passage of time, the “new” lust fades and one can see products more objectively - and often for the silly inventions they actually were.

So the next time I’m in a store and see slight “improvements” of once-suitable products (a toothbrush with colored bristles that change color over time, or a laundry-soap ball), I smile and realize I have the long legacy of Popeil to thank.

Note: You can watch some of these product commericals at Biography.com.

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