Spanish infomercials think differently than other infomercials. First we had skin cream made from snail shells. A scene from a recent Spanish infomercial for a product called K-Nutric is even more strange. KNutric is a health drink that promises to provide necessary vitamins and minerals and cure a whole host of ailments—nothing new there so far.
But to demonstrate that K-Nutric can give you energy (“energía”) they dip an electric plug attached to a lamp into a glass of K-Nutric—which causes the bulb to light up!
Look at these screen shots:
And don’t forget that K-Nutric is a liquid you are supposed to take internally:
I don’t know about you but every time I pass a kerosene lamp I feel compelled to pour myself a shot. I also use an extra long Krazy Straw to suck the gasoline out of auto fuel tanks—it’s fun watching the gas go through the loops!
Does anyone else find this a bizarre way to sell a health drink?
Infomercials have long tried to fool people into thinking they were watching legitimate TV programs. Infomercials have most often tried to disguise themselves as talk shows, but some have tried to pass themselves off as travel shows, news broadcasts, home shopping channels, and even sitcoms.
This effort at disguise was worse back in the late-80s/early-90s, and it was even a source of controversy, as some people called on the FCC to crack down on this “deceptive” type of advertising. In the years since, people have gotten more familiar with infomercials, so infomercials have made less of an effort to present themselves as something else.
I have, however, recently seen an infomercial which I think wins the award for best effort to disguise itself as a legitimate TV program.
The infomercial is for a website called Winning Edge. Winning Edge is a sports handicapping service which offers “picks” to gamblers who wager on sports.
The Winning Edge infomercial is extremely slick and incredibly well produced. It looks indistinguishable from many of the sports programs shown on ESPN. The host is a real, if minor, sports broadcaster, Chet Coppock. This infomercial even has a third-party sponsor, the Hooters Casino Hotel in Las Vegas. This is the first time I can remember any infomercial that included a sponsor other than the product or service being touted by the infomercial itself. Check out this clip:
Even as sophisticated as I am about infomercials, I had to rewind this thing to the beginning just to make sure it really was an infomercial. And indeed I found the on-screen disclaimer:
Infomercials for sports handicapping betting services are not new. I remember seeing several of them back in the mid-90s. But the sports betting service infomercials I saw back then were among the cheapest, chintziest things on the air.
They’d be hosted by some perky blonde and the “experts” touting their services would all be fast-talking New Yorkers partial to thick gold jewelry. Any effort made to present itself as a real sports talk-show was laughably pathetic. The perky blonde host would ask about some upcoming NFL game and the expert would barely feign interest—or even not feign interest—in her question before touting his picks service:
Perky blonde host: The Raiders are playing at Denver this Sunday. Should be a pretty high-scoring game.
Sports “expert”: I don’t know about that because I’m thinking about my college picks. Call now and you’ll get my top 3 picks…
The Winning Edge program is a light-years improvement in quality over those older crappy sports betting infomercials.
One thing these that sets all these sports betting infomercials apart from most other TV infomercials is that they produce a new program every week, unlike most infomercials which produce one program and run it over and over for months or years. The sport betting infomercials do this because they need to offer “picks” related to upcoming games. Also, the sports handicapping infomercials generally show up in the fall, when football season makes people more interested in wagering.
One common scam that I heard a lot of these sports “picks” services pull goes like this (and by the way I am definitely NOT accusing WinningEdge of doing this):
1. They offer people their top pick free for three weeks.
2. They tell 50% of the people to bet on one team and the other 50% to bet on the opposing team. Of course, the pick that half the people get turns out to be a winner.
3. Nearly all those 50% with the winning pick call back the next week. Again half those people get told to bet on one team and half get told to bet on their opponents. So 25% percent of the original callers now have gotten two winning picks in a row.
4. The third week those 25% call back. The same strategy is employed, so now 12.5% have gotten three winning picks in a row. Those people think the guy giving them the picks is an absolute sports handicapping genius and are very willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to subscribe to whatever worthless “picks” service that man is offering.
About a month or two ago, I heard something on the radio that I could hardly believe. It was a commercial for the Oreck XL vacuum cleaner. The radio ad opened with some cheesy jingle that sounded like it was written in the 1970s. Then David Oreck, company founder and Electronic Retailing Award nominee for “Best Male Presenter,” came on to talk about the benefits of his Oreck XL vacuum cleaning product. Then at the end of the commercial, out of the blue, David Oreck sings! Mr. Oreck sang that cheesy jingle from the beginning of the commercial a cappella. David Oreck’s singing sounds just like you would expect David Oreck to sound like singing.
Ever since hearing that radio commercial I have been eager to get that Oreck ad recorded. However, although I have heard many other radio commercials for Oreck XL vacuum cleaners and air purifiers, I have never again heard that commercial with David Oreck displaying his vocal talents.
This classic (for me) radio ad is probably lost forever. But if by any chance anyone has David Oreck trying to be the next American Idol recorded somewhere, please contact me.
Otherwise, I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next edition of Golden Throats before we hear him sing again.
I’ve had the infomercial for Youthful Essence with Susan Lucci on my TiVo for quite a while. But I hesitated to actually watch it because YouthfulEssence is a skin care product from Guthy-Renker, and in my opinion skin care infomercials and infomercials produced by Guthy-Renker are the most boring infomercials of all.
I finally got around to watching it and most of the Youthful Essence infomercial is indeed boring. There are, however, a couple of interesting things there.
Most notably, they try copy the TV show Sex and the City with Susan Lucci as a Carrie Bradshaw having “lunch with the girls at a chic Manhattan restaurant.” Even the background music is a rip-off of Sex and the City.
Susan Lucci promises that she and her girlfriends will “dish about everything: Men, aging, our beauty secrets, and more.” But they really don’t talk about men at all—except for that one woman who jokes about her boyfriend stealing her Youthful Essence Microdermabrasion device. Ladies, if your boyfriend is using your Youthful Essence—or any other of your skin care products—then there is a very high likelihood that he is a closeted homosexual. (Wasn’t that an episode of Sex and the City?)
Later they offer a “resurfacing tool” (great name for a skin care device) that comes with a curious “magical massage attachment.”
We all know how much women love using electric devices to “stimulate circulation.”
Here’s one of those offbeat little moments in an infomercial that just seems to stick in everyone’s mind. From the infomercial for Blu Blocker sunglasses it’s “Dr Geek” rapping on Venice Beach about his BluBlockers:
About a month or two ago, I heard something on the radio that I could hardly believe. It was a commercial for the