How To Position Yourself In The Market For Success
My first question Alex is for those that don't know you, could you tell us a little bit about your
background please?
Sure. I started as an infomercial marketer, a television commercial marketer. And that was during
the early 90's, about 91, 92, when the infomercial business was flourishing.
The advertising rates on the cable stations, in the US, and even overseas in the UK and in Europe
were more affordable and a little guy of maybe $40,000 - $50,000 budget could compete with the big
guys, Fortune 500 companies, because they would buy the odd hour times between 1 AM to 6 AM
because of a concept called the Isolation Factor which direct response guru Alvin Eicoff talks about.
When there's a program you're watching that you're really not interested in, let's say a B-Movie, then
a commercial looks more interesting. So the best direct-response television spots whether it's a 60
second, two minute, or a 30 minute infomercial ... which is what I did, I wrote those spots as a
copywriter, and I also took the winning spots infomercials and took them to QVC both overseas and
domestically here in the United States as well as the Home Shopping Network.
We took them to print advertising such as Parade Magazine and USA Weekend in the States, as
well as overseas catalogs and domestic catalogs and then finally into retail and some of the
products included the Thigh Master, Ron Popeil's Ronco Food Dehydrator, and many of his other
products -- The Contour Pillow which many folks may know of, that was in the early 90's, the
Doctor's Book Of Home Remedies by Rodell Press, Time Life Books, we did a lot of videos with
them, the Wild Animal Series, and Home Improvement Series and a host of others.
I learned the trade on television because it was so darn fast, and immediate, the responses were
almost immediate. On QVC you would know within the first 5 minutes if anyone was interested in
your offer, which is like catalog television.
So there I learned the trade of copy and direct marketing and I learned if you can soften the market
through television and print advertising whether direct mail or catalog, and then ultimately retail, it
would be a lot easier to do.
And direct marketers like Joe Sugarman and others, there's very few people like him, he's certainly
one of the masters, he did the BluBlocker campaign of course with the BluBlocker sun glasses.
Those types of offers worked best because they were direct marketing offers and the genesis of
those offers started with master copywriters like a Joe Sugarman.
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