What the Dog Saw [8]
No doubt Frosty Wishon was a charming and persuasive person, but he assumed that this was enough — that the rules of pitching were the same as the rules of celebrity endorsement. When Michael Jordan pitches McDonald’s hamburgers, Michael Jordan is the star. But when Ron Popeil or Arnold Morris pitched, say, the Chop-O-Matic, his gift was to make the Chop-O-Matic the star. It was, after all, an innovation. It represented a different way of dicing onions and chopping liver: it required consumers to rethink the way they went about their business in the kitchen. Like most great innovations, it was disruptive. And how do you persuade people to disrupt their lives? Not merely by ingratiation or sincerity, and not by being famous or beautiful. You have to explain the invention to customers — not once or twice but three or four times, with a different twist each time. You have to show them exactly how it works and why it works, and make them follow your hands as you chop liver with it, and then tell them precisely how it fits into their routine, and, finally, sell them on the paradoxical fact that, revolutionary as the gadget is, it’s not at all hard to use.
Thirty years ago, the videocassette recorder came on the market, and it was a disruptive product, too: it was supposed to make it possible to tape a television show so that no one would ever again be chained to the prime-time schedule. Yet, as ubiquitous as the VCR became, it was seldom put to that purpose. That’s because the VCR was never pitched: no one ever explained the gadget to American consumers — not once or twice but three or four times — and no one showed them exactly how it worked or how it would fit into their routine, and no pair of hands guided them through every step of the process. All the VCR-makers did was hand over the box with a smile and a pat on the back, tossing in an instruction manual for good measure. Any pitchman could have told you that wasn’t going to do it.
Once, when I was over at Ron’s house in Coldwater Canyon, sitting on one of the high stools in his kitchen, he showed me what real pitching is all about. He was talking about how he had just had dinner with the actor Ron Silver, who was playing Ron’s friend Robert Shapiro in a new movie about the O. J. Simpson trial. “They shave the back of Ron Silver’s head so that he’s got a bald spot, because, you know, Bob Shapiro’s got a bald spot back there, too,” Ron said. “So I say to him, ‘You’ve gotta get GLH.’ ” GLH, one of Ron’s earlier products, is an aerosol spray designed to thicken the hair and cover up bald spots. “I told him, ‘It will make you look good. When you’ve got to do the scene, you shampoo it out.’ ”
At this point, the average salesman would have stopped. The story was an aside, no more. We had been discussing the Showtime Rotisserie, and on the counter behind us was a Showtime cooking a chicken and next to it a Showtime cooking baby-back ribs, and on the table in front of him Ron’s pasta maker was working, and he was frying some garlic so that we could have a little lunch. But now that he had told me about GLH, it was unthinkable that he would not also show me its wonders. He walked quickly over to a table at the other side of the room, talking as he went. “People always ask me, ‘Ron, where did you get that name GLH?’ I made it up. Great-Looking Hair.” He picked up a can. “We make it in nine different colors. This is silver-black.” He picked up a hand mirror and angled it above his head so that he could see his bald spot. “Now, the first thing I’ll do is spray it where I don’t need it.” He shook the can and began spraying the crown of his head, talking all the while. “Then I’ll go to the area itself.” He pointed to his bald spot. “Right here. OK. Now I’ll let that dry. Brushing is fifty percent of the way it’s going to look.” He began brushing vigorously, and suddenly Ron Popeil had what looked like a complete head of hair. “Wow,” I said. Ron glowed. “And you tell me ‘Wow.’ That’s what