My old companion in arms Neil Flett* wrote a book or two on "pitching". But what Neil calls pitching is far too gentlemanly a word for it. Long before the oily men of adland described fawning and sucking up to clients to win their business as "pitching", there were "The Pitchmen" - born again salesmen who travelled the carnival routes with a carpetbag full of snake oil or the like. They can still be seen operating today in some 'paddy's markets' (pitching perfume or watches). They gather a crowd and deliver their speil.
They aren't short. Up to 20 minutes can go by as these masters of melodrama, dramatising every feature of their product into a benefit, hold the baying crowd back, refusing to let them buy his product until he has them at climax point. Then he lets them rush the table and throw their money down.
The earliest direct response tv commercials went to air in the early 1950s in the USA and they used pitchmen doing the pitch to camera. The commercial for Vitamix, the first blender, last half an hour. It was listed in the tv program guide and it even out rated Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra. (OK, so the test pattern could have done that as well.) It was dramatic. It was entertaining. It was educational. It was a darn sight better than the crap that fills free-to-air tv time on the fringes and in the regions - infomercials with no info. Bland bullshit.
The middle aged Vitamix pitchman had the viewers believing that their failure to buy and use a Vitamix to preserve the goodness in the food they served their families was undermining American culture and endangering national security - leaving the nation vulnerable to Russian invasion. And they believed him because he was believable.
If someone out there has a copy of the 5 minutes that survive from the Vitamix commercial, please post it on Utube and let us know. I had a VHS copy - very scratchy. Think they threw it out after I left Boomerang.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment