The Department of Redundancy Department
Direct marketers know that it pays to be redundant, and also to repeat yourself
There’s an old format for presentations you may have been taught:
Tell them what you’re going to tell them.
Tell it to them.
Tell them what you told them.
Now let’s see what that looks like in a DRTV commercial that happens to be #6 in the nation right now, per DRMetrix. (To save you time, I edited the spot to jump from the opening to the offer.)
Notice that:
They teased the knife-set giveaway in the opening.
They demonstrated the knife set and gave it away.
They recapped the entire offer, including the knife set.
Seems familiar, doesn’t it? If we put that into a format, it would be:
Tell them what you’re going to give them.
Give it to them.
Tell them what you gave them.
In infomercials, that last part is usually introduced with the classic line: “You get it all!” And like every other memorable phrase from our world, there’s a core selling principle behind it. More after the break.
Chart Watch👁️
Battery Daddy
Pitch: “Organize, store and protect all your batteries”
Offer: $19.99 for one, discounts on multiples
Marketer: Ontel Products Corporation
Producer: The Schwartz Group
This campaign is climbing the charts again, coming in at #26 and sure to rise in the coming weeks. It first broke the DRMetrix Top 20 in Q4 of 2020.
I call the campaign out because it’s an uncommon example of a stand-alone, long-tail seasonal item. Big hits that capitalize on trends are awesome, but they tend to run their course quickly and die out within a year or so. Sometimes savvy marketers can keep the good times rolling by regularly introducing ‘new and improved’ versions (see GraniteStone or Pocket Hose). But this is a rare example of an item you can keep selling as-is for years (decades?) to come.
Other examples from DRTV history are Hampton’s Twin Draft Guard and Allstar’s Magic Mesh.