Infomercials: Is There Really More?

“But wait, there’s more!”  We hear it all the time on TV and radio ads.  It’s the infomercial.  It’s starting to drive me crazy and I have a few thoughts on both how we market and how we consume and listen.  In fact, I’m amazed these commercials are still around.  Is it bad marketing and gullible consumers that just allow this low-standard, cheap form of artificial and old-school marketing to retain its life?  Are we accepting the status quo with no awareness to the shallow messaging?  Infomercials have become no commercials.

Here are some thoughts:

• Is there really more or just less of more?
• Am I really so busy that I have to “wait,” so I can hear what you really want to tell or sell me?  But wait.  Dude, I refuse to wait.  That’s right.  Get used to it.
• Do I always have to buy two for the price of one?  If your product is really that cheap, then why not just tell me the actual price with a little margin added in.  That way, we get the value from the start.
• Tell, don’t yell at me.  Make the case.  The real case.
• Do you have to repeat the 800 number five hundred times in that quick, direct, and artificially excited voice?
• Why do the actors who drop the product, gasp in a look of frustration, and then smile in a sub-human way have to be so dramatic?  Let’s be human.
• Do you really think we are that gullible?
• Food processors, magic glasses, super glue, super mops, and garden hoses that last for six hundred years and never tangle.  Does it have to be so dramatic?
• Do I have to buy, “now”?  Really?  Things can wait if your product really is that good.
• Which is better: permission or insulting marketing?
• Are your copywriters really serious?  Please tell me they are not.  Please.

I know, this is a marketing vent.  It just insults my intelligence and I trust yours.  Does the classic infomercial really work?  What scares me is that they must because they keep on coming.  Well, I refuse to market in this way.  I’m an infomercial iconoclast. The sincere connection with a potential customer does not have to be so artificial and contrived.  Come on, as marketers and consumers do you really need a C- rated commercial that bleeds cheap to sell your product?  No.  You can do better.

Don’t wait.  There is more but not from this artificial form of consumer-insulting marketing.

By Stuart Atkins