Tuning into the TV connection

Drug Store News, Jan 17, 1994

If you're interested in cashing in--big--on a high-volume, high-margin selling opportunity, infomercials and TV direct response advertising are part of the future--and of the present.

These TV marketing strategies are becoming pervasive. Fifty-five percent of a recent group of consumer survey respondents said they'd seen an infomercial in the preceding year--up from a mere 11 percent in 1991, according to research conducted by Bruskin/Goldring Research for the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

Of TV Guide readers, 72 percent had watched info-mercials, another survey showed, and 29 percent of those viewers had bought a product featured on an infomercial.

What drug store retailers need to know about infomercials and TV direct marketing is this: Industry experts say only about 10 percent of the people who buy products advertised on direct response television will buy them via the telephone. The vast majority, however, prefer to buy the products at retail where the merchandise can be examined up close.

The Bruskin/Goldring survey found that 8.5 percent of people who said they watched infomercials had bought infomercial products from TV, and 19 percent of those people had bought products in a retail store based on information from an infomercial.

Mass merchandisers already know this. At present, they are the TV direct marketers' largest retail customer base. Now, department stores and even supermarkets are getting into the act as well.

Drug chains, too, have their share of successes. Says Andy Khubani, executive vice president of Tele-Brands, Fairfield, N.J., "One national drug chain sold 100,000 pairs of our Ambervision sunglasses in 1992. They advertised them at close to the TV price, but without the shipping and handling charges."

Challenges to conquer

Although brand-name goods and improved product quality are helping TV direct response advertising gain credibility, consumers are still skeptical about buying products directly from TV. Says David Savage of the National Infomercial Marketing Association (NIMA), Washington, D.C.: "Some people want to see the products in person before they buy. Some simply don't like to give out their credit card numbers over the phone."

Yet, infomercials drive retail sales. Savage points to juicers as a prime example of how infomercials literally regenerated a category. Juicers were merely a slow-moving part of the retail mix until infomercial marketers such as Jay "The Juiceman" Kordich appeared on the scene and turned juicers into one of the hottest products in small appliances.

Following the lead of companies such as Nordic Track, more and more branded goods manufacturers are using infomercials to sell their products. Among newer entrants are cosmetics companies like Revlon and Estee Lauder, and OTC manufacturer Smith Kline Beecham, which runs late-night infomercials for its Sominex sleeping aids and reportedly will run infomercials for Tums.

The greatest pitfall in selling these products at retail is their dependence on intense advertising support to drive sales. Once the infomercial stops, the product can die almost immediately.