Jeremy Weisz 12:33
I’m just curious how the thought process goes in, you know, from the beginning, and it sounds like even the beginning, the name, it sounds like you were very nice about it and but basically was, was basically said, Are you sure you want to call it the Iron Horse? Yeah. How does that go over? And were you then, kind of just saying, we’ve already seen this product, and this type of name work better.
Ed Crain 13:01
I don’t think if you’re going to go against the Health Rider with the Iron Horse, I think you got a problem, right? So at the end of the day, I mean, it’s not rocket science. So you get a guy that’s an NFL quarterback, and then you got the name rider, I think we can do better than iron. So, you know, power, power came up, and that was really kind of like, again, you know, it was the California group that was really involved in, you know, signing the talent and obviously clearing the name and everything else. So at the end of the day, I was like execution at that point, but it’s, you know, I’ll never forget the day he arrived here in Toronto, and we went up to a mall north of Toronto, and we had a fitness lady named Caminneur. And she was, like, a top fitness expert. And I’m trying to think she was like a fitness model, but also she was in fitness shows, not unlike, like, there were like fitness shows, like she was an aerobics person. Anyways, very nice lady, very fit. We shot the show. But you ask, like, a lot of times in those days, it was, you know, you had the ingredients and and then you get to the set, and, you know, we shot two days, I think long days, like 12 hour days. But there’s a lot of, you know, figuring out what works. And I think that was the magic of kind of that time, was that you really had good relationships, good people, committed people to try to make this work. Nobody wants failure. And you, especially if you’ve got someone like Fran Tarkenton on set, you know he’s not going to walk away from a take that’s not good. And. Neither am I. And so I think a lot of it was, you know, in those days, we always had budget concerns. We didn’t get, you know, millions of dollars to shoot these. So we, you know, we were trying to be very efficient. You know, I remember in that shoot, there were times when people would say, What, you’ve got the same people in one scene in the background, and they’re again, they change in the next scene. And I’m like, Well, you know, that was, that was edited. So if somebody was going to, you know, arrest me on continuity, they’d have a good case. But the performance, like when we got that pitch correct and we had the value statement. I mean, it’s very successful infomercial for the time. And I remember it as really the start of my career in long form. And then, you know, I had like, I think that led later to working with, you know, Jack LaLanne, and later to working with people on the NutriBullet. But it was, you know, it was really that core, that period where you learned that you could get all the right ingredients in a room and you could make a show.
And that came from my background. I was in Entertainment Television before that, at the flagship station here, for the CTV network. And it goes back, and I know I tell these old stories, but I go in and I’d say, Well, what’s, you know, what’s the next project? And they’d go Ed, you know what? It doesn’t really matter. There’s 1000 scripts on the side. Put your hand in, pull one out. The only thing that matters is who we put on it and the budget I give you. I would say, okay, you know, and I don’t believe that that’s all true, but at the end of the day, you know, you’ve got to approach a project. And I always say to people, the worst turn you can make is the wrong turn 10 feet out of the gate. Because if you do that, you know, then I don’t care how many experts you bring on board, you’ve taken the wrong left turn. So I say, you know, that’s the focus of getting your pitch correct, and that’s why you go back and you’ve interviewed these pitch men and these people who have, who have stood at, you know, national exhibitions, pitch grounds, flea markets, and they get people to stop and watch them, and they do that because they They’re masters of engagement.
So a lot of times I would say I recognized good pitchman, and I sought out working with good pitchmen. And aside from being a great football player, Fran Tarkenton was a pretty good pitch man, like he got on that, like he was genuine and people trusted him. And I think that’s that’s something, you know, when we talk about the medium of television, whether, whether it’s linear or or programmatic like it, if you get your brand, if you’re starting a business and and you have a really well oiled machine digitally, you know, you’re still fighting against everybody else that has the same thing. So how do you get a separator? And so I think that’s even in the early days. And today, you know, you can graduate to television and use it properly to engage audiences in a medium if they still trust for the most part.
Jeremy Weisz 18:17
So Ed, my question is, talking about the elements you mentioned, getting the pitch correct and the value statement, so I want to talk about some of those elements. Of what to you is, you’re like, Okay, we hit it. This is it? So, just to recap, though, okay with the power rider, you have a good product, good pricing, good name, good spokesperson. Now you have the content. What are some of the elements you look for in that pitch that need to be there?
Ed Crain 18:55
Yeah, I mean, I think what I want, and it’s, it’s interesting, you know, we, we just finished, you know somebody, I think it was, I’m trying to, trying to think willful, like selling wills online a company, and we shot, like, testimonials, right? And while you asked me about that, and why bring that up, because I still think really well shot testimonials are critically important. You have, you have the center of your pitch, like, even if, in an infomercial, you have real estate. So you, you know, you’ve got to get to your offer. Your offer is going to be somewhere between two and a half minutes and three and a half minutes. That’s hard sell. That’s, that’s pretty much, you know, everything. If you spent the first 30, your infomercial, you know, trying to draw people in, like, create some excitement on sad, oh, my God, there’s Fran Tarkenton. Oh, look, the set looks beautiful. Whatever it is you, you know, you’ve got that you’re trying to build a story at the end. And then testimonials come in, testimonials that, really, you know, today, like, it’s still important to see people that you can relate to that are verifying a product. Often, that’s now done online, whether it’s through, you know, some, you know, scores people get on products are done still through some form of testimonial or approval by the consumer. So in those days, that was a really important ingredient. So I would think that I wanted to make sure that the ingredients were there. If I’ve got the star, I’ve got the co star, I’ve got the pitch, I’d go, well, then you know, what else can I add? I can add real people. I can add engagement. I can add trust. I can try to build a level of authority that the hosts have been given to pitch this product, and that comes from the consumer. So if it feels genuine, I’d always really, really search for that moment.
And I remember technique shooting. A lot of shows and programs you’d see. If there was a demonstration, and if the camera’s zooming in, and you get three cuts in the middle of that zoom, guess what? You don’t trust it, right? So, performance sometimes, I don’t know if it was an exercise machine, a pressure cooker, I mean, working with Kathy Mitchell and her sandwich makers. And, you know, it was like, No, we got to get the demo correct, and you cannot cut in the zoom right, like people have to trust that that’s actual demonstration. So I really focused a lot on that in the early days and people would say, Well, no, that was a good take. You can, you can cut that. I’d go, No, I can’t. I said, you have to get this correct. And so you’d have to have that moment where you actually had, you know, the camera movement was genuine, the people got the performance right, and the demo came off perfect. And I think that’s the element of trust, or you lose trust, or you lose sales.
And so you’ve got people, if you’ve done your job in the first third, and you’d hit them with the first offer, and then you get into the second third and you hit them in the final offer. I mean, the stats in those days were that most people hit the buy button after seeing a version of the infomercial three times. So it wasn’t that they were, they were buying in the first, you know. So it then becomes, you know, a kind of a strategy too, because you want to make sure that, you know, in whatever markets you’re airing the infomercial, that you’ve got enough play time to actually create that engagement. So you can’t just, you know, shoot an infomercial, test it, you know, for two days and go, Oh, I didn’t make it. No, you have to create because that’s still the authority. It’s like, I would say to people, I would say, you know, if you’re going to meet somebody in a restaurant or a bar or something like that, and you’re sitting there and you see something on the air. You may have seen that at home before, but now you’re seeing it again. You’re still not going to click on it. Maybe the next time you’re at home and it’s late at night, you actually click the order button, because now you’ve seen it three times, and you’re kind of going, actually, that’s a pretty good pitch. I like that story. I think that’ll work, right.
And so it’s just an interesting process, and I think that’s still here today. Obviously, you know, somebody said to me years ago, they said, you know, attention spans are 10 minutes and shrinking by a minute every year. So what are we down to now? 18 seconds on TikTok? Like it’s, it’s really shrunk, right? But you still, I still think you need to create engagement in, you know, different deployments of media and some of them should be a longer form of engagement. Like, I see, even today on the sports channels, you know, I see big brands running like a one minute commercial, and it’s like a little story version, right? And I’m thinking, that’s kind of like the new infomercial, because they’re actually using it to create engagement trust, and you know, a contact with the consumer, with their potential consumer.
So the infomercial business in the early days was like that. And, you know, the promise was, you know, really evaluated by the consumer? Is that genuine? You know, if you had, if you had Fran Tarkenton, you know, he’s a genuine athlete, if you had Jack Lalanne, I mean, he’s an icon, right? I mean, if he’s telling you, this was a guy that I remember. Where he’s 87 years old, and we’re on set one day, and he gets in an armchair, okay? And he pushes up and goes into a handstand in his suit, okay? Like that guy is genuine if he’s telling you to drink juice and buy this, you should buy it, right? That’s how I felt about him.
Jeremy Weisz 25:23
What about you know, there’s a lot of elements, even in the content piece. And you mentioned a couple times there’s a first offer, second offer, third offer. What are some pieces of the offer that must be there?
Ed Crain 25:41
Well, obviously, I think that, you know, there’s a demonstration of the product. So you want to see what I call a magical transformation. So that was always, you know, the key, you know, your magical transformation can be, you know, fat to slim. It can be dewy to like, well formed for a cake or a bun or a sandwich. But you know, you have to have that magical transformation. And you’ve touched on that in the first third. You got to nail it in the CTA, right? You got to nail it in the call to action. So the call to actions got to be the best collection of those magical transformations that you have. And then I still think it has to have a test, maybe your best testimonial, somebody that they relate to. And then you have to do your value proposition and and you have to go down that string where, you know, this is the price that it’s, you know, available now. But wait, there’s more. We’re also going to give you this. And then there’s a countdown. There’s only 1000 left, and it’s counting down now, you better get in. So there’s all those techniques. There were those techniques in those days. I don’t, I don’t know. I still think that works in home shopping.
Jeremy Weisz 27:03
To me if you look at it, pricing, price, anchoring, yeah, scarcity, all those things are timeless marketing principles. I think.
Ed Crain 27:13
Yeah, they are. I mean, we went through in the last couple of years, you know, we started probably a year ago, you know, like, with a line that this product is in our warehouse and ready to ship, and we show, like, the warehouse and the forklift and the product going because people were, you know, ordering stuff that wasn’t arriving. And we know that was because there were supply chain problems. So you had to build some trust. You know, we do stuff in Canada that, you know, because, you know, we’ll put the little Canadian flag there and the .ca so people, you know, people trust that it’s coming from a warehouse in Canada, and they’re not going to be waiting for something coming from China or the US or something that’s going to take eight weeks, and they don’t want it anymore, and they can’t send it back. So I think there’s that element of it too, right? And so I think, like today, like today’s clients that you probably talked to Jeff a lot about, you know, my son in, you know, that supports the digital side of our business. You know, a lot of those products and services are, you know, they’re still using some of those techniques with testimonials. They’re trying to create, you know, what is your magical transformation on a credit score? It’s like, well, that you, you can access it right away in your telephone and it’s like, you know, so that that’s, I mean, there still has to be an offer and a pitch and, and I think that, you know, there, like I said, the attention span is lower, but you still have to run through those techniques in your offer. There has to be value, and there has to be a promise. And I think that, you know, you need to do that efficiently, and you need to do it in the formula of a lot of time that you have.
Jeremy Weisz 29:15
Yeah, and it seems like a lot of it, you know, revolves around trust and credibility, and what was the expectation going into this campaign of like, okay, I think we’re gonna sell X amount, and what actually happened?
Ed Crain 29:32
I think it’s changed. Like there was in the old days of the business. I think, you know, companies would say, okay, you know what? We’re gonna try 40 products. We’re gonna shoot 40 products. We’re gonna test, do 40 TV tests. And if we get a single, a, double, a, triple and one home run, we’re fine, and the rest are in the garbage. And so that one winner would pay for a lot of non winners. So that is not the case today. I think it kind of works differently. So we will work with a client and say, let’s, you know, and again, I use companies like, you know, these companies like Trivago, they have a, you know, data scientists on board, they’ve got huge digital teams. They’re coming to work, you know, television and and try to build awareness. So you’re, you’re still going out there, and you’re trying to build on top of that digital base.
So if a client comes and it’s a mid level company that’s trying to break into the market, you know, Jeff’s going to take that client. Jeff’s my son, who’s VP of sales, and runs our whole digital team, but he’s going to take that client, and he’s going to, you know, do the Facebook testing. He’s going to try Instagram. He’s going to do, he’s going to basically do a lot of testing on the digital front to see what message resonates where. And then once we can build a base and we can start to test television, then we have a better idea of what’s working and how we can grow that business, because television will still drive engagement, and so will radio. Radio, surprisingly responsive these days for certain offers, so and as is, out of home, out of homes come a long way, I think, from billboards. You know now, you have the you know, you have all of the data available for video billboards, you know, from passing traffic from cell phones, so you can so, you know, obviously, programmatically, you can run an offer. And a lot of times what Jeff will do is go out and, you know, we might have a test budget of $30,000 in CTV, but we’ll save 10,000 for retargeting when we get the results, and then we’re digging deep into the retargeting and really trying to prove a case to expand that right? That’s different than this. Oh, let’s shoot 40 commercials and see if we get one that works, right? There’s a little more science to it now to build a base and grow on that base.
Jeremy Weisz 32:20
And Jeff says, You don’t know about the digital stuff. Come on. No, at the time with the power rider, are they going in with expectation? I don’t know. Maybe not, like, okay, we’re just hoping to make $2 million off this, and then it does over $100 million. Do they have that mindset of what they are guesstimating it’s going to produce.
Ed Crain 32:41
Well, I think again, this is how the business has evolved. Back then, I mean, by the time you committed to doing an infomercial, you were still spending a considerable amount of money to engage the contracts, the talent, get on set. You know, I’m going to throw out a number, say you’re going to spend $200,000 to $500,000 shooting an infomercial that doesn’t include all of it. So and yeah, so you know, are you going to throw it up there and it didn’t work? Like, still, even back then, I would say only one of 10 infomercials that tested were successful. And it’s very kind of you to interview me now and talk about the ones that worked, but, you know, we’d have to have a five hour interview about the ones that didn’t work, right? And I think the best line back then was, Well, Ed, if you’re going to be in this business, you know, what you do is you take the rear view mirror and you throw it out the window, because what’s behind you doesn’t count, right? And the other line was, you know what, Ed sometimes just got to get amnesia. So you know that that game, which was, but you knew you were in Vegas, and you’re putting your chip down on the circle, and so the big players were putting down big chips, but it was still the roulette wheel, right? Like, to some extent, is our message going to resonate? So I like to say, you know, if the hit ratio was, you know, one out of 10, I’d like to say at that period of time where I was fortunate to work with great relationships, with people in Los Angeles, with people in New York, with people in Florida, you know, I was fortunate to do a lot better than those, those ratios, but it doesn’t mean to say that you still don’t have stuff that doesn’t hit, you know, and a lot of that’s, you know, is, is sometimes it’s beyond your control, especially when you’re engaged as a writer and a producer, you’re, you’re engaged, but you’re not the one that’s done the show costing and, you know, and basically done the margins and everything else. And, you know, if they don’t get that working correctly, if they don’t come to you with their homework done, then it’s going to be hard to make something work.
So there were a lot of times where, I think, you know, the wrong ingredients were in a pitch or an offer. And, you know, the other thing was how thorough were people in their product sourcing, because the infomercial business was famous back then for, and I’m talking not just infomercial, but two minute spots. I mean, I can’t remember the name of the product, but I remember the one that was a fan and, and they showed it in the commercial. The fan was, you know, like cooling you down when it was really hot in your apartment. But it was wireless and the fan came, and the thing to get it to go, you had to open a window and have some wind, that was an actual product that sold in a two minute spot, right? So, there were those guys, right, and, and so I think part of it, too has any, any kind of marketer, and I don’t care, you know, these are people that come to us today, still for, you know, production. We just, you know, we just did something like for 25 radio spots in one day and got them out to, you know, deliver to the client two days later, and they’re on air on the weekend, right? So it’s, it’s sometimes like, I look at it and now it’s, it’s a combination of having that creative insight, you know, really, really honing the unique selling proposition, working with the client on it, and then execution. And now it’s speed to market. We used to in those days of producing those infomercials, it’d be a six month process from the time we ideated an infomercial till it was ready to go to air.
And you know, then you’ve got your test and then, of course, depending on your test result, you’ve got to gear up manufacturing. So a lot of time, you were six months even from a positive test to actually being able to go and blow it up right today. I think I look at, you know, I can think of one spot, we ran the QB up here for a while. And everybody knows the QB exercise machine, but those guys like, that’s more recent, they had funding, I think, to really go to television and deliver television budget, and it became kind of like a hybrid of direct response and brand. So I call that, you know, where we’ve come now to like performance marketing, and we think, you know, we’re a performance marketing company, and we have a track record of 30 years of data in every category you can imagine. We know how to execute, and we can be a great partner to help grow products, but there’s still that back and forth to really get there and build credibility. And I think the beauty of it today is that there’s so much technology, and there’s there’s so much ability to, you know, get to scale on a on a path that you know has been plowed a bit for you, but it’s still on you to kind of like, be better than the next guy, and to get the messaging correct and and figure out how you’re going to stand on top.
Jeremy Weisz 38:25
And I’m wondering, I love watching old and new infomercials. I mean, I learn a lot from them, and people have put lots of time, energy and money into these things. I’m curious, some of your favorite infomercials like, you know, I’ve remember watching the Ron Popeil ones, I don’t know if you remember Joe Sugarman, the blue blockers ones. And just some amazing knowledge there. I don’t know if it’s the Jack LaLanne or the ShamWow. What are some of your favorite infomercials and some of the things that you learned, even if you worked on them?
Ed Crain 39:04
I mean, I think that, you know, I would always watch, like I worked a few times with Kathy Mitchell, and she was, you know, we did the sandwich makers and a lot of kitchen products. But, you know, she was just so genuine and she wanted people to make this food in their homes, whatever her product was. So I loved her infomercials. I obviously have a special place for Jack LaLanne. I did so many shows with him, but again, as I shared before, he just wanted people to feel better, right? So I loved his shows, and I love the fact that he could react, because he did the shows with his wife like they actually started, and they went and they had him work with a co host in Florida on HSN, and you know, it was the results were okay. But when he got up there with his wife beside him, and there was that energy that the two of them had, and the camaraderie and the fun they created, people knew that was genuine. It created trust. He was like, to me, an icon of the fitness business. And I know that Arnold Schwarzenegger, at Jack’s 90th birthday, which was in Los Angeles, he was there, and I remember Arnold got up and he talked about their time in the muscle pit in Los Angeles, and he said, you know, he said, back then, Jack LaLanne, you kicked my ass. Today, you still kick my ass. I have pictures with them, and I just think he was genuine. And I think he had such a great message for people, and I think a lot of it, even if you go those guys like he was obviously worked with Joe Weider, and it was the first actual universal exercise machine. And then, you know, of course, you know his relationship with Arnold, and I just think that he’s an icon, and so I’d have a hard time like saying he’s not. Some of my favorite infomercials I do like Emeril. Emeril, who’s done some, I didn’t work with him, but I’ve watched his infomercials he created, you know, pretty good brands around cookware. So I think he was pretty strong. I look back and I think outside the box, like I’m trying to think in the best pitch man.
Jeremy Weisz 42:03
What about the ShamWow?
Ed Crain 42:04
Oh my gosh, yeah, I have to put Vince on the list. So, you know, Vince, that was in our early development as a company. He came and started running the commercial in Canada, the ShamWow. And we really didn’t know who he was, and it was a very, very small budget in the beginning, but you know, that guy, man, he hammered it out at the LA flea market, and he honed his pitch, he shot his own commercials. He built that up from, you know, just basically believing in himself as a pitchman, and his product worked, and he sold a lot of ShamWows and in those days, we would have a media party every year in the summer, and I remember we brought up celebrities. And, you know, sometimes it came, no one got more attention than Vince. Everybody wanted their picture taken. And he was just, he’s a very good pitchman. So, you know, if we’re going back in history and talking about those times.
Jeremy Weisz 43:14
What was it about him when you think about him as a pitchman? What was it?
Ed Crain 43:23
Well, I think that, if you watch him, you know, and I don’t know, you know, as full like he, like everybody, these pitch men, they overcome adversity like they learn it, you know, the hard way. He would say something like, you know, if I can’t do $300 a day at the LA flea market, then it’s not a product, you know, but he would learn it. Another name that comes to mind is, like Billy Mays. Like, how many infomercials and shows did Billy Mays do? And he was a solid pitch man, right? But these guys, they honed their pitch, maybe not always in flea markets, but they would test their pitch, and you know that would be Billy Mays.
Jeremy Weisz 44:13
You think he was famous for one of them, OxiClean, I believe, right?
Ed Crain 44:19
Yeah, OxiClean. And then, actually, I don’t know why, you know, maybe I saved him for last. But, you know, Tony Little’s a good friend that I’ve worked with for many, many years. So, you know, the gazelle infomercial was probably one of the first fitness infomercials, and I worked with Tony on that. And this is a pitch man. So to get the gazelle pitch right, I remember I’d fly down to Florida, we’d sit on his balcony, and I turned the tape machine on, and I’d say, go. And then we would just go back and forth. And I said, Well, what if you say this? What if, and I don’t know how many hours we would do that. And then finally, you know, somewhere out of that, you know, came the script for the infomercial. But as I’ve said before, when we got into the studio, it also just had its own life, because you got there, you put together the work, you tried to own the pitch, and he is still doing it today. I mean, I gotta take my hat off to Tony Little. He’s still on air. He’s still selling products. The last thing we talked about was an electric bike. But he’s just, you know, he’s constantly working at it. He stays in shape and I think, you know, he’s definitely one of the icons of the infomercial business.
Jeremy Weisz 45:44
Ed, I just want to be the first one to thank you. I always learn a lot from anything direct response, and so I appreciate you sharing the lessons, the stories, and I want to encourage people to check out kingstarmedia.com to learn more, and we’ll see everyone next time. Ed, thanks so much.
Ed Crain 46:03
Thanks so much. Jeremy, Okay, take care.
