Pulled pork, anyone? Why an informercial for a pressure cooker is so effective.

I was watching an infomercial for the PowerPressure Cooker while I was on the elipitcal the other day. I couldn’t find the remote at the gym to change the channel and got busy working out, so I started watching. I didn’t have the audio, but it didn't matter. The subtitles were on the screen and I was a captive audience for 30 minutes as I was eliptical-ing.

Believe it or not, after about 15 minutes of watching the infomercial, I felt like I wanted to buy one.

I didn’t need one. I don’t even use pressure cookers, really. So why did I feel the need to get it?

It was the customer relationship lifecycle.

Believe it or not, infomercials use tactics that follow the lifecycle during the ad, guiding you to understand the problems you have, present a solution, and encourage you to buy.

How does it work?

The video opens by showing a family dinner. It’s something we all like and want to do more often. However if you have ever cooked such a dinner, you know that it can be overwhelming to prepare. The cutting, the chopping, the preparing, the steps to cook each item. And you want cleanup to be easy. The infomercial shows a bunch of cooking disasters - burned pasta, destroyed pans. I thought it was over the top (how many things can you burn?), but it made its point.

Cooking isn't always easy.

Then they host a chef to demonstrate all of the possible meals you can make using only this pressure cooker - from turkey to chicken to cornish game hens to rice to ribs to chili to wings and more. They show how many purposes it has. It’s pretty amazing! You can even make cornbread and an apple coffeecake with it.

By taking you through the pre-purchase and the purchase decision steps, and by providing some information from post-purchase, if you didn’t think you needed this Pressure Cooker, you will by the end of the 30 minute show.

How they address Pre-Purchase:

They define a problem you may have, and figure you'll probably relate to one of these:
- Your need to make a famiy dinner with easy preparation and cleanup.
- Your fear of not making certain dishes as good as you could (like rice, pulled pork, turkey).
- You find cooking difficult.
- You think cooking takes too much time.
- You want to eat healthier, more flavorful food.
- If you don’t have any of those problems, then you may have a cleaning problem after cooking you’d like to solve or reduce.
They describe and showcase what the product is and what it generally does.
They also explain what pressure cooking is, it's benefits, and why you'd want to do it.
- They explain the health reasons why pressure cooking is a better approach.
- There is an explanation of the theory behind pressure cooking and how it works.

How they address the Purchase Decision

They provide a solution to the problems outlined above.
- Some of the solutions are simply to use the product.
- They show how easy it is to cook almost anything.
- They show how it's easy to make healthy, more flavorful food
- They demonstrate how easy it is to clean, how it works for cooking.
Demonstrate how to use the product.
- Because it’s a video, they can’t give a demo or have it available ot use in a showroom, so they cook with it. Sure, it’s a time elapsed cooking show only displaying the end products. But you get enough of an idea in the time elapsed story to understand how it works and what it can do.
- You fully understand the solution and its capabilities.
They provide a sense of its size for you by placing containers for canning in it, demonstrating how much it can hold in comparison with other presure cookers.
They compare the pressure cooker with rice cookers and other similar equipment onscreen.
- It's not an in-depth comparison. In the video, they demonstrate enough of a difference to show why the pressure cooker is a better choice/option.
They don’t use customer stories because they have a chef onscreen doing a demo. In a way, that’s a customer story on it’s own.

Post-purchase

They demonstrate how to clean it, maintain it, and how to store it.
They post the price with directions how to buy it and own it.
They mention the guarantee to show that buying it isn't a huge financial risk.
They provide instructions and cookbooks to help you get started making these great dishes.

Yes, the infomercial touches on almost every section of the customer relationship journey except the product experience because you need to own the product for that. I think that’s why it’s so effective.

You understand what you are getting into with your purchase, what problems you'd solve, what the solution would provide, and how it would benefit you. You could see what it would mean to own the product and how it would contribute to your life. There's no risk, it saves you time. At the end of the ad you understand what the product is and how it compares to other solutions. It's easy to make up your mind.

Oh yes, and the emotional connection is around food and making meals for your family. If you are challenged cooking and feel bad that you aren't a great cook, this will help. If you are in the pursuit of healthy cooking, this will help. It solves many fears.

After hearing how it’s 4 installments of $33, I’m still tempted to get one. I have nothing to lose. Pulled pork, anyone?

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Best Halloween Lighting Projector

Posted by: Abestpro | Monday, January 29, 2018 at 12:51 PM

This is important to know about pressure cooker if you recently start cooking or using pressure cooker safely. When you purchase pressure cooker then an instruction page is attached, you must to read all the instruction  microwave cabinet  

Posted by: microwave cabinet | Monday, September 11, 2017 at 12:32 AM