What It Is: “Arguably the World’s Greatest Supplement!”
Description: A rock-solid foundation of nutrition built upon a whole-food super-food formula.
Quote: “Probiotics devour yeast in the intestine!”
Shills: Joe Costello, a sturdy-looking old fellow with silvery, thinning hair; Two women in their late 40s or so who look like aging Realtors, one wearing some kind of huge medallion on a choker.
Politics: Religious right.
Set and Costume: Joe and Friends plug their nutritious catch-all in the kitchen of what appears to be a model luxury home they are borrowing for the weekend. Later they will host an open house. Their outfits are bright and business-casual. Joe wears some kind of turtleneck with a zipper that starts halfway up the chest.
Cost: 2.52 lbs. for $99.00. Apparently 2.53 lbs. would push the price into three figures.
Gimmick: Demonstrating how little nutrition you’d get if you tried to juice broccoli yourself.
Bonus Gimmick: Enraptured use of the word “probiotics” every five minutes or so.
Extra Bonus Gimmick: The Kylea Chronicles, an in-house Web rag that combines the worst of arcane news design with the worst of 1995-era Web design. [UPDATE July 17, 2006: Link has died. Has the Chronicles?]
Evaluation: The Living Drink crew makes an earnest effort to avoid the kitsch that marks many infomercials, but as a result leaves their pitch stranded in upper middle-class nutrition purgatory, devoid of charm or even a hint of irony. The lack of discussion about what the Living Drink actually tastes like is disturbing. And the spot doesn’t even begin to try to prove that people who drink all this shit at once don’t get murderous diarrhea.
Rating: 1.5
– Scott Gordon
Posted on June 1, 2006