The urgent deal, voiced most concisely by Michelle Obama, who implored viewers to “Vote like your lives depend on it!” The surprise: Heartwarming glimpses of Americana that you wouldn’t get from a generic campaign backdrop, projected behind a podium. The product that solves the problem: Biden, a decent, caring guy. There’s the problem: Donald Trump, agent of chaos. The Ronco formula, it turns out, maps fairly directly to the Democrats’ convention messaging. He offered testimonials, demonstrating that he used his products the same way his customers would and for the same reasons. He had a tinkerer’s enthusiasm and common-man touch the dehydrator infomercial starts with a brief interlude about the bald spot on the back of his head, followed by a demonstration of the spray-paint-for-hair consumer product that could hide it. The fifth element was Ronco founder Ron Popeil, inventor of the dehydrator and other fantastic gadgets-and, as he described it, his own most eager customer. The surprise (promise to tell a friend and you get the new Dial-o-Matic Food Slicer, absolutely free!). The urgent deal (“This $130 value for only two easy payments of $19.99!”). The solution (now, you can make beef jerky yourself-for around $3 a pound!). There was the problem (too many additives and preservatives in food also, beef jerky is expensive). Take the vintage infomercial for the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator and Beef Jerky Machine. The video laid out five key elements of every Ronco ad: the problem the product that solves the problem the urgent deal the surprise (“But wait, there’s more!”) and the trusted salesperson. And the infomercials that sold them were “a singular artform,” the Wall Street Journal declared in a 2017 video, timed to Ronco’s (ultimately unsuccessful) IPO. The products were designed to insert themselves into consumers’ daily lives and solve some previously unarticulated need. Because as far as infomercials go, their Buy-This-Biden show was a textbook product pitch.Īnd the gold standard of the infomercial was the Ronco ad, which introduced drowsy viewers to rotisserie grills and egg scramblers, along with the Veg-O-Matic slicer and the Pocket Fisherman, a handheld portable fishing pole preloaded with fishing line. And the Democratic National Committee might have been taking notes. Those were the 1990s-era Ronco products that became near-household names through the power of the infomercial. So if you want to grade how successfully the Democrats sold Joe Biden to the public this week, the best point of comparison might be the way one company convinced millions of Americans they needed the Showtime Rotisserie. But distilled to its essence, the convention is a TV sales pitch, with Biden as its product. It channels a range of genres, from reality shows to daytime talk to the earnest public-television telethon. The pandemic turned this year’s socially distanced Democratic National Convention into nothing but a TV show. In ordinary years, a political convention is a loosely made for television event: a mix of political rally and insiders’ party, filtered through chattering TV anchors and breathless commentators.
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