When is it a good idea for a company to use infomercials to sell a product?
Stephen Rosa President Advertising Ventures Providence, Rhode Island Richard Thalheimer responds: For hot products with broad appeal, infomercials make financial sense. They give you the exposure of a commercial but at a lower cost because they air on late-night television. You can accurately measure how customers respond to your message, and the ads can pay for themselves in direct sales. A few companies have actually built entire businesses using just infomercials, but in my experience, infomercials work better if you already have retail distribution for your product. Our infomercials were great for driving sales at our retail stores. In 2000, we did our first infomercial for the Razor Scooter. In-store sales of the Razor had been relatively strong in the first year, but I knew that cheap imitators would come into the marketplace and that the fad would eventually fade. We made a two-minute infomercial that ran between 10 and 50 times a day. We sold just enough scooters over the phone