There are all types of pitchmen in direct-response marketing.  Billy Mays, Anthony Sullivan, and even Vince Offer (better known as “The Sham-Wow Guy”) have all become celebrities in their own right, simply by virtue of being top infomercial pitchmen. Other pitchmen are famous for promoting their own products:  Ron Popeil, Jack LaLanne, Richard Simmons, Susan Powter, Matthew Lesko, and Richard Sherer (the Video Professor) take the airwaves to sell their own programs and inventions.   Infomercial exercise videos have launched their own field of stardom with fitness experts including Billy Blanks, Shaun T, and Chalean Johnson selling challenging exercise routines to devoted fans.

Long before pitchmen became famous simply for being the visible, personable face of an infomercial product, marketers knew the importance of using a famous face to endorse their products.  Before pitchmen became celebrities, celebrities became pitchmen.

Stardom sells, and the following lists includes some of the most famous faces to launch infomercial celebrity endorsements.

• Models – Cindy Crawford (Meaningful Beauty), Christie Brinkley (Total Gym), Daisy Fuentes (Winsor Pilates), Vanessa Williams (ProActiv), Elle Macpherson (ProActiv)
• Athletes – George Foreman (George Foreman Grill and Everyday and More Cleaner), Hulk Hogan (Hulk Hogan Ultimate Grill)
• MMA – Chuck Liddell (JackRack), Georges St. Pierre (Rip60), Randy Couture (Tower 200)
• Actors/Actresses – Chuck Norris (Total Gym), Mario Lopez (Ultraflex), Barry Williams/”Greg Brady” (TimeLife70′s Music Explosion), Susan Lucci (Malibu Pilates)
• Singers/Musicians – Jessica Simpson (ProActiv), Katy Perry (ProActiv), Justin Bieber (ProActiv)

As I look through this list, I’m noticing that ProActiv Acne Solution really seems to have a corner on the celebrity pitchman market.  I mean, who doesn’t sell this stuff?  Just for fun, I’ll go ahead and post a list of Celebrities with Formerly Bad Skin who’ve appeared in ProActiv commercials:

• Julianne Hough – Dancing with the Stars
• Jenna Fischer – The Office
• Alyssa Milano – Who’s the Boss, Charmed
• Vanessa Williams – singer, actress, model, disgraced former Miss America
• Justin Bieber – singer
• Jessica Simpson – singer
• Katy Perry – singer
• Alicia Keys – singer
• Mandy Moore – singer, actress
• Jennifer Love Hewitt – actress
• Kelly Clarkson – American Idol, singer
• Avril Lavigne – singer

Celebrity endorsements lend a familiar face to the infomercial pitch, giving television viewers a sense of trust and a brush with fame.  After all, infomercial products are designed to make our lives easier, and if it’s good enough for those accustomed to a life of luxury and the finer things, shouldn’t it be good enough for us?

Last week we looked at the influential copywriting of Arthur Schiff, who coined the phrase, “But wait, there’s more,” which was destined to become a classic line in  direct response marketing.  Schiff wrote these words as part of the Ginsu Knife infomercial, a television commercial that set the standard in how as seen on TV products are promoted.  No matter how persuasive the ad copywriting, however, an infomercial will be rendered ineffective without the proper delivery.

Enter the pitchman.

Originally used to identify a traveling salesman, a peddler, or a carnival barker, the term “pitchman” has grown to embrace salesmen of television infomercial products, particularly those who utilize aggressive and persuasive marketing strategies as part of the “pitch.”

The role of the pitchman has evolved from a faceless voice-over (as in the Ginsu infomercial) to that of pop culture icon.  While many as seen on TV products use celebrity endorsements as part of the pitch (for example, Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley for Total Gym), other pitchmen have become celebrities in their own right.  Perhaps the best known pitchmen of all time include Ron Popeil, Billy Mays, and Anthony Sullivan.

Popeil has been appearing in infomercials longer, selling his own inventions, including the Showtime Rotisserie Oven.  Mays, however, perfected the art of the pitch.  In fact, Billy Mays got his start as a pitchman in the traditional sense, working as a traveling salesman and hawking the Washmatik portable washer on the boardwalk at Atlantic City before becoming spokesman for Orange Glo International.  Mays promoted Orange Glo, OxiClean, and Kaboom! using his energetic pitch, becoming one of the most widely known and highly demanded infomercial pitchmen to date.

At the time of his death, Billy Mays was working closely with fellow television pitchman Anthony Sullivan.  The two not only made frequent infomercial appearances selling a variety of as seen on TV products, but also starred in the Discovery Channel program PitchMen, in which inventors would present their products to Mays and Sullivan, who would create infomercials for the products and pitch them in test markets.  After the death of Billy Mays,  Anthony Sullivan continued the show and the search for the perfect pitch.  In a recent episode, “Sully” reminisced about his friend and marked his absence at an infomercial convention:

PitchMen was not the only show to highlight the importance of aggressive, persuasive sales techniques and the salespeople who utilized them.  In 1999, a documentary film Pitch People was released that described “the art of the pitch” and spotlighted pitchmen who sold products through visual demonstration and direct response marketing.  The film, starring Ed McMahon, bills itself as “the true story of the world’s second oldest profession.”  View the Pitch People trailer here.

Perhaps the art of the pitch can best be summed up in the words of old-time pitchman Harry Mathison:

“It’s not what you sell, it’s how you tell them the price.”

Today’s Way Back Wednesday goes way, way back–all the way to 1979.   Ron Popeil, the founder of Ronco, has been bringing his as seen on tv products to the airwaves for forty years.  With classic infomercial products such as 6 Star Knives and the Pocket Fisherman, Ronco has become a staple in as seen on tv inventions.

One of the early Ronco products was Mr. Microphone, and its infomercial has to be my favorite yet.  Some of the Way Back Wednesday videos are pretty funny, but this one actually made my sides hurt.  Mr. Microphone was a wireless mic designed to broadcast your voice over any FM radio, and guaranteed to liven up any party.  Just watch:

You can see that this karaoke predecessor was perfect for all kinds of people:

• Kids
• Professional Entertainers
• Drunken Party-Goers
• Crazy Dancing Transistor Radio Guys
• Pervy Cat-Calling Potential Kidnappers
• Amateur Roller Derby Teams, including Roller Skating Grandmas!

And at only $14.88, Mr. Microphone was a bargain!  For only a little more than $5 extra, you could order Mr. Microphone II, which also included a radio, batteries, and an 8-foot connecting cord.   I’m sure Mr. Microphone was stuffing all the stockings in December 1979.

On our Way Back Wednesday posts, we’ve looked at a lot of different seen-on-tv products, and we’ve seen the evolution of the television infomercial.  The Mr. Microphone commercial reminds us of a kinder, gentler time, when someone could jive through the park, singing aloud through his transistor radio without being institutionalized, and a man could yell out the car window at innocent bystanders without fear of being added to the national sex offender registry.  Ah, those were the days.

Last week, we at SeenOnTV Express reminisced about the perplexing little contraption known as the FlowBee:  half vacuum, half haircutting device, and 100% confusion.  However, the FlowBee is not the only infomercial product designed to style your hair in the most mystifying of ways.  Today we look at another bizarre product designed to give you the hair you have always dreamed of–if, that is, you have always dreamed of spray painting your head.

GLH (which stands for “Good Looking Hair,” of course) is a “hair spray paint” designed to cover bald spots and thinning hair.  GLH is made up of spray paint and fibers that “mimic real hair follicles.”  Despite being featured on Way Back Wednesday, GLH is still available; however, it earns  its spot in our retrospective due to its early infomercial beginnings when it was hawked in the early 90′s by Ron Popeil, legendary inventor, pitchman, and founder or Ronco, one of the leading companies in as seen on TV marketing.  Popeil was awarded the “Ig Nobel Prize” in Consumer Engineering in 1993.  The awards were originally given to “discoveries that cannot, or should not, be reproduced,” but the intent was later revised to reward 10 achievements that “”first make people laugh, and then make them think.”  The Ig Nobel Prize committe, which includes scientists and Nobel Laureates, described Popeil as the ”incessant inventor and perpetual pitchman of late night television,” and said his inventions redefined the Industrial Revolution.

In the following video, Ron Popeil is seen promoting the Ronco product GLH.  In this video, he actually spray paints his own head.  Without laughing.  Theoretically, GLH provides the illusion of actual growing hair rather than a vast expanse of baldness.  To me it looks like–well–a spray painted bald spot.  Judge for yourself:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSEDyOAGS4E&feature=related

Lest we mock hair-in-a-can too much, lets keep in mind that GLH is one of many products designed to give the illusion of thicker hair by camouflaging the scalp.  The ubiquitous Joan Rivers has a new product called Great Hair Day.  Great Hair Day is a powder, not a spray like GLH, and it is applied in a much more subtle manner, using an applicator brush rather than an ozone-eating aerosol can.  Once again, infomercial evolution has managed to refine one of its more befuddling products. 

Unless, of course, you prefer to graffiti your own head.