Friday 23 April 2010

Infomercials – Do you love or hate them?

Excuse the rate but it seems now whenever I watch [[TV]], I get sold to. Now I have been watching [[TV]] since the [[1970]]’s but its these Infomercials I am talking about. Apparently it all changed in 1984 when the FCC allowed this format of advertising.


You know the sort of advert, where it’s recorded as it it’s a TV program. It is sometimes hard these days to tell the difference between a TV program and one of these. Have you noticed these daytime programs now where they say enter our competition and win $1,000. They are not doing us a favor, they will make way more than that in income.


I was reading this post - http://www.mahalo.com/infomercial-fail-montage, this talks about the infomercial format. It says that a lot of these infomercials show a household chore that is a real bind and then they go on to say how this chore is resolved through their product.


Have you ever bought one of these products? You know Miracle Carpet Shampoo, or Super Duper Fungus Remover as examples – I know I never have. I suppose though if we want free to air TV then we need to put up with these types of commercials, probably forever!


The article goes on to give some funny examples of where people are doing things wrong, e.g. “Several people have trouble pouring milk, juice or soda into a glass”, “Lots more issues with cracking and preparing eggs, clearly a trouble spot for many Americans”. I would recommend you have a look at http://www.mahalo.com/infomercial-fail-montage, quite an interesting look at failed montages.

If by any chance you don’t know what I am talking about try this link, it has nine infomercials on it, you will cringe as you watch these - http://www.inthe80s.com/infomerc.shtml There are some well known cringworthy examples here such as:
*Bruce Jenner: PowerWalk Plus (treadmill)
*Jake Steinfeld: Body by Jake (hip and thigh exercise machine)

Another site here features 10 videos of infomercials, if you want to see some.

Overall and regrettably I think this format is here to stay. Make your own mind up. As for me this rant is over, on to my next topic I suppose. One thing is for sure I am going to do my best to avoid any more infomercials for today at least.

Thanks everybody for listening, I suppose even this is blog is selling. I am selling the concept of not watching infomercials.

Posted via email from alanmhorton's posterous

No comments:

Post a Comment