Description: A workout program
Main Pitch: "The hottest core-strengthening, butt-lifting, body-firming, zero-impact cardiovascular workout ever created"
Main Offer: $19.95 for 4 DVDs, booties & kneepads
Bonus: None
Starring: Rebecca Kordecki
Website: www.BootySlide.com
Prediction: Bomb
I often talk about 'Swiss Army' products. Like the famous multi-function knife, such products have too many features to describe adequately in a 120-second commercial. The result is confusion, and confusion is a sales killer. (Wow, two SciMark catch-phrases in a single paragraph!)
Getting to my point, this is the workout program equivalent of a Swiss Army product. Here's how the commercial describes it: "A fusion of ... slide training and high intensity interval training with yoga, pilates, aerobics and dance." The whole spot is like that (see the Main Pitch quote at the top of this post), and this isn't the first time I've come across the approach. Some production companies seem to believe that cramming as many exciting words as possible into every sentence is the way to get people to order.
In this case, there's no doubt another reason why the marketers felt the need to distract the viewer with a torrent of words: The actual product is a pair of slippery socks and some knee pads. Seriously. You have to wonder how someone got talked into (or talked themself into) funding not just the production of a DRTV spot, but the production of an entire DVD series as well.
