Especially if you consider only ingestibles or cosmetics, why don’t more marketers arrange for independent clinical tests?
BY JEFF MELTZER I was there! I was there in 1985 when Tom Fenton, one of the founding fathers of the infomercial, said he was going to start making 30-minute commercials appropriately named infomercials: a combination of information, entertainment and commercials. I was there when my mainstream Madison Avenue friends laughed at me after I told them I was going to start shooting these low-budget shows on videotape in lieu of film. They accused me of being desperate to get work (I was!). I was there when the same people who were supposedly smarter, more experienced and bigger out-of-the-box thinkers that I predicted the rise and quick fall of this lowbrow form of advertising. They were probably the same people who said the same thing about reality TV. But, I was also there when people started to actually call to order weight-loss and skincare products directly from a show on TV. Who would do that? Why would anyone do that? The makers of these products were completely unknown. No one knew
