ADVERTISING: Infomercials

▪ 1996

      In 1964 a gadget inventor and salesman named Ron Popeil started a company named Ronco and became instrumental in creating the television infomercial industry in the U.S. Poised between superficial talk shows and the strident tones of Madison Avenue, the half-hour ads originally existed in a kind of television netherworld—shown only late at night after most consumers had gone to bed. By 1995, however, infomercials were no longer limited to appliances such as Veg-O-Matics and the Ronco food dehydrator. Their products ranged from high-priced Barbie dolls to citrus fruit, from skin- and hair-care products to diet regimens, and from investment advice to methods for improving interpersonal relationships.

      Modern infomercials usually relied on celebrity endorsements rather than high-pressure salesmen to lend credibility to their products. Singer Dionne Warwick had been affiliated with the "Psychic Friends Network" for almost a decade, while actresses Meredith Baxter and Ali McGraw both appeared in popular infomercials for Victoria Jackson cosmetics. Covert Bailey, a familiar face on public television, advertised an exercise machine, and veteran actress Angela Lansbury brought children's literature to infomercials by promoting a series of Beatrix Potter stories on videotape.

      Infomercials also showed they had great potential for profit. The National Infomercial Marketing Association International (NIMA), the trade association for the industry, estimated that in 1994 the ads brought in $1 billion in product sales. NIMA played an important role in reinforcing marketing guidelines and in holding the companies accountable for the claims they made for their products. NIMA also presented yearly awards for excellence within the industry. In 1995 fitness expert Jake Steinfeld swept the field, winning infomercial of the year, best product, and best product offer.

      More recently, program-length commercials gained in popularity among mainstream products. Many companies opined that a standard 60-second television commercial was not long enough to present their products thoroughly, so they began turning to an offspring of infomercials called "documercials" to fill the need for more in-depth advertising. Documercials generally concentrated on promoting a product or company image rather than on direct sales. Familiar names included the Toyota and Ford motor companies, Sears, Roebuck and Co., American Airlines, and Eastman Kodak. In a bid for a younger audience, Sega of America released an infomercial describing new software for its Genesis video game machine, running the ad for four weeks during the 1994 holiday season.

      Industry executives predicted a metamorphosis of the infomercial, which would be crucial to its survival in the second half of the decade. There was an effort to make infomercials more sophisticated by making various technical improvements. Some political candidates had begun to use documercial-like programs to promote themselves and their policies. The ads had even found their way onto the Internet. Direct-response marketers often made the claim that infomercials were the first interactive medium, and their appearance on the information superhighway seemed to many to be a natural step in their evolution.

      (AMANDA E. FULLER)

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