Praising the Pitchman

From The Sunday New York Post (9/11/05)

HAWKER REDEEMED
By DAN ACKMAN

Victor Grillo Jr. has long been the red-headed stepchild of the advertising world.

Rarely singled out for praise, Grillo seemed to only get attention when folks mocked him for his informercials.

After all, it was Grillo who brought the Ginsu 2000 knife set and his Liquid Leather wonder product to late-night television.

Go ahead, raise your hand if you, too, gave Grillo's products a laugh.

Lately, though, it's Grillo and his brethren in the 1-800 advertising business that have been doing the laughing — all the way to the bank.

That's because after years of shunning the direct-response genre of advertising, the Fortune 500 crowd is moving in.

And Grillo, among the pioneers of the infomercial business, has been there to greet them, ringing up business for his Advanced Results Marketing company while still pushing his own products on the side, like the Everlife Flashlight — no batteries or bulbs!


Having several Fortune 500 companies as clients has brought Grillo not only more success, but a feeling of redemption. If Madison Avenue once considered him a cockroach, as Grillo is fond of saying, "At least now we're a big cockroach."

Feeding the growth of direct-response advertising is the ability of companies to directly gauge the impact of a commercial.

The basic idea is that rather than vague ideas such as brand-building, the advertiser knows precisely whether his ads are generating a return.

Lately, traditional advertisers such as BMW, Procter & Gamble and pharmaceutical giants including Pfizer have been spending at least part of their ad budgets on direct response. David McCracken, a spokesman for P&G, says the change in the ad mix is part of a renewed emphasis on return on investment. Grillo's ARM, based in Marlboro, Mass., now counts among its clients The Holmes Group, Conair and a half-dozen Las Vegas casinos.

Grillo, 39, is not the biggest as-seen-on-TV seller. Guthy-Renker, which claims more than $1 billion in annual sales, likely holds that title. And he is not the biggest direct-response ad agency either. But he is rare in that he does both. He is also unique as an on-air pitchman for his own ad agency, hawking ARM's services on morning cable news shows.

Grillo says his Everlife Flashlight is the No. 1 direct-response product on TV. He exaggerates, but just a little, as Jordan-Whitney, a company that ranks infomercial buys, says the flashlight has not top-ranked, but has been consistently in the top three in recent weeks. The flashlight will also be available in major retail chains this Christmas season.

Direct-response advertising, whether in long-form or full 30-minute infomericials, differs from traditional advertising. All ads have a "call to action," meaning a plea to call an 800 number, whether to buy a product or simply request more information.

Call-to-action advertising is popular because it is charged a lower fee than normal TV advertising. However, it is not guaranteed a time slot and is often banished to late-night or overnight periods.

ARM has recently merged with a Results Media, a traditional media-buying company based in Phoenix, in a $40 million deal. The combined company projects $200 in media buys this year, along with about $60 million in product sales.

Though he still relishes his Triple Edge Wiper Blades-hawking past, Grillo admits, somewhat ruefully, "We're getting to be respected."

See also my article in Forbes: Near-Perfect Pitch