There is nothing good on television at 4:00am.
This I already knew, because there really isn’t anything good on television at all. But it became painfully clear while I was on my “lunch” break at 4:00 in the morning that the programming relegated to that prime block of time was even more sub-par than usual.
Loud and obnoxious, with the likes of Billy Mays promoting yet another product.
What will it be this time? Life insurance? Another Get Rich Quick⢠scheme? The Handy Switch? OxiClean? The Bagless Euro Stick Shark? The Magic Bullet? Tony Gazelle’s exercise machine? Microfiber cleaning slippers that clean your floor while you walk? The Ding King? A Forever Flashlight? An Awesome Auger? I could fill an entire post, no, an entire weblog with items that are sold through infomer… errr, direct response television.
The multi-function steam cleaner/cooker that also chops your vegetables, weeds your garden, waxes your car, hangs your pictures, helps you lose weight, cleans your house, and sings to you, all the while it makes YOU money!
To a student in the field of economics, that begs the question: does anybody really buy this stuff?
Loading ...Good question, and I have no idea as to where to find the answer for one very simple reason.
Most people who do actually buy this stuff are probably too embarrassed to admit it, like buying laxative at Wal-Mart.
But, given the magical powers of the Interwebs, I’ll give it a shot to see how honest people are willing to be.
If you think about it, though, and if you would excuse the unorthodox analogy, infomercials are sort of like laxative: they are designed to help expel cash from your wallet, quickly and easily.
From a practical perspective, these infomercials have to be making money. Otherwise, how would the companies behind them continue to afford to keep them on the air?
Once you have the 30-minute segment produced, and have the inventory of widgets from some sweatshop in China, the only significant expenses are airtime and ordering/fulfillment.
A quick Google search for “infomercial airtime cost” reveals an ad for “30 Min. of TV $2499 & up.” True, it is more expensive to run on national networks than on one local network. But, usually where the risk is greater, the rewards, too, are also greater.
Infomercials to me in most cases are examples of wonderfully creative concepts that really could work, but the implementation of the product is so bad, that you know it can’t work like they advertise. Maybe if they were to keep it at 3 easy payments of $29.99, and not make one of the payments for us, and keep shouting “But wait, there’s MORE!” and throwing in “useful” accessories, the quality of the product would be slightly better. The profit margin is still sky-high, even with all of the freebies and discounts.
I guess that’s wishful thinking, though.
Read the rest of my posts in the next 20 minutes, and receive a heaping dose of sarcasm, absolutely FREE.
A couple times I happened to see tv in the US out of curiosity (via a streaming service which was airing some local californian fox tv channel): because of the time zone difference with Italy I have encountered early morning programs, and I was entertained by the number of such tv ads.
I have asked myself the same question, indeed: if some firms pay for that space, there is a profit in such a business model.
I guess the trick there is “very high margin” as you note. You present some potentially brilliant ideas that people are possibly interested to buy, but these products are very badly manufactured: the fact is you do this on Tv so you target most lonely/old people and the word-of-mouth effect about the crappiness is very small, and you can keep selling for a year or so, then you change the product: all of this in an endless loop.
The very few successful product ideas will eventually be realized in the mass production, improved in some parts, with a better overall quality, and at a much lower price thanks to the scale economies, therefore becoming mainstream. The other ones will eventually fall into oblivion.