The obsession hits long before the pitch.
What is Is: A book about alternative remedies the government and pharmaceutical companies apparently don’t want people to know about. Also the companion to various other titles on natural medicines and weight loss.
Quote: “It contains specific information that was censored out of the first book by the U.S. government.”
Shills: Author Kevin Trudeau and “talk show host” Donald Barrett, who looks like ESPN might have rejected him for appearing too sharky.
Set and Costumes: A “late-night” talk-show look, complete with fake night skyline in the background. Both men wear plain yet dignified suits.
Cost: $9.95
Time Before Product Appears: Nearly a full 10 minutes – without music – during which Kevin tells Donald, calmly but urgently, how the FDA and pharmaceutical companies are depriving people of the benefits of research into natural cures for everything from acid reflux to cancer.
Concrete Examples: “There’s an herb from South America that, taken for 30 days, cures herpes.” Trudeau also has many stories about running into people who apparently allow him to treat them. A woman in an airport, he says, once let him cure her daughter’s fear of escalators. Most of his stories, in fact, seem to take place in airports and/or on airplanes. What, doesn’t he ever get spotted in line at Walgreens?
Obvious Moment: “They’re trying to get every person on Planet Earth to use and buy drugs.”
Obligatory Stigma: A disclaimer before the commercial starts notes that Trudeau’s work is not approved by the FDA.
Ultimate Claim to Responsibility: “This book is filled with – not my cures!”
Evaluation: This infomercial is almost purely polemical – minimal flash, no gimmicks. The messenger and the huckster are rolled into one guileless unit. “Direct” is pretty much the only way to be here, and the naked exhortations aren’t really all that convincing for paid-programming land. Trudeau seems to understand that the message is already confusing enough, so good for him for not adding to the mass of indecision he’s bound to cause in more impressionable viewers.
Rating: 3
-Scott Gordon
Posted on March 3, 2007