Pitchmen... Anyone watching it?

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supportomatic

Asshats for sale.
Oct 29, 2008
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Just got around to watching a bunch of Pitchmen shows I had DVR'd. Anyone else watching that show on Discovery?

Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan are a couple of douches, but they do know how to sell shit. Found out their avg production costs for a 2 min infomercial spot are only $20k... that's a lot less than I would've thought.

They don't go into nearly as much background detail as I'd like to see, but I do find the show interesting when I'm out of other stuff to watch.

Anyone gleaning anything useful from it?
 


Found out their avg production costs for a 2 min infomercial spot are only $20k... that's a lot less than I would've thought.

I figured Billy would charge alot more than 10k to appear. He does take a cut though. But makes signing him pretty damn cheap with really not much risk.
 
I figured Billy would charge alot more than 10k to appear. He does take a cut though. But makes signing him pretty damn cheap with really not much risk.

Yeah, now there's a guy who 'gets it.' There's a whole lot more to be made on the back end. I guess that's what bought his Bentley.
 
Yeah, now there's a guy who 'gets it.' There's a whole lot more to be made on the back end. I guess that's what bought his Bentley.

Absolutely - if you know you can sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves then taking a cut of the back end is the practical thing to do. If I was the advertiser I would actually want to just pay Billy a fat cut up front because I would be betting that he would be able to get a ton of starts but I would have able to harvest the tail and come out WAY ahead in the long run.
 
I figured Billy would charge alot more than 10k to appear. He does take a cut though. But makes signing him pretty damn cheap with really not much risk.
Yeah he charges "several tens of thousands of dollars & 20% of the gross" that is what a CNBC special said.
 
I'm enjoying the show. As someone without any "real" marketing experience, it's interesting to see the experts in action.

Who else checked out some of the product websites to see if they had an affiliate program?
 
The episode where they are selling coffee cups and java-jackets was fantastic - "Just grip it, and sip it!"
"Get your Rachel Ray autographed coffee cup here!"
 
I liked the episode with those foot sweeper things. That woman just wouldn't accept that they sucked. I've lost a lot of money because I wouldn't drop a campaign I knew wasn't going to work.
 
watching it right now, it cool to see that some of the things on late night tv actually came from this show
 
It's very interesting. Love some of the demos they do, I always would have assumed most of those where fake but they actually go out and do them.
 
I liked the episode with those foot sweeper things. That woman just wouldn't accept that they sucked. I've lost a lot of money because I wouldn't drop a campaign I knew wasn't going to work.

Those foot sweepers were the worst thing I've seen on the show. I'm pretty convinced that girl paid for development costs with stripping money and that some 'favors' were involved to get them to take on that worthless product. That and the shark-repelling ankle bracelet. I mean c'mon.

I also love it when know-nothing entrepreneurs try to make demands on how their product should be promoted.
 
I love the show as well. Great examples of how many untapped markets are out there. The lady chemist who invented the heel stick is a great example. Cracked heels... now that is a niche, lol.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IELlntuc8k"]YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.[/ame]
 
Those foot sweepers were the worst thing I've seen on the show. I'm pretty convinced that girl paid for development costs with stripping money and that some 'favors' were involved to get them to take on that worthless product. That and the shark-repelling ankle bracelet. I mean c'mon.

I also love it when know-nothing entrepreneurs try to make demands on how their product should be promoted.

I was actually surprised they even bothered with the shark-repelling thing. My guess is they purposely pick some bad ones for the show.

It's interesting to see that they are actually testing the products before they promote them though. I wonder if that's just for the show as well.
 
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