This is a recorded interview on Brad Costanzo's Bacon Wrapped Business where host Brad interviews Ron Lynch about his career and tactics in direct-response television and infomercials. Ron describes his transition from filmmaking and grocery/retail management into infomercials, claims responsibility for over $3 billion in sales from TV direct-response campaigns, and summarizes notable campaigns/products (Total Trolley, Flavorwave Deluxe, Smartware, Light Relief). He reports roughly 300 shows produced (about 100 long-form and 200 short-form), ~15 years in the infomercial industry, and product-level details such as a design patent and a 14-year run on air for Light Relief.
Questions this video answers
About 15 years.
Over $3 billion in sales.
About 300 shows: roughly 100 long-form infomercials and 200 short-form infomercials.
Total Trolley (convertible ladder/furniture dolly/hand truck).
Light Relief (infrared pain relief device) — he said it was on the air for 14 years and that he has the design patent.
Chapters
How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon wrapped business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.
All right, welcome back to my little profit kitchen folks. This is Brad, host of Bacon wrap business and it is my distinct pleasure to welcome you today. I'm going to let you basically eavesdrop on a conversation I'm going to have with my guest Ron lynch while who I'll introduce in just a second. But Ron has been a friend of mine for a couple of years. I've seen him work. I was dazzled by what he's been able to do and I was really lucky to get somebody with Ron's experience and knowledge in direct response tv. More specifically to get on here and talk about direct marketing at the highest levels. These are the levels of infomercials where hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake. And Ron happens to be a 15 year veteran of the infomercial industry. He's worked on some of the largest brands and campaigns that you've seen along with some of the household products that you see every day. He's worked with industry greats such as Billy Mays and other folks who you may be familiar with. And last we spoke, I'll let him correct me if I'm wrong. He's responsible for, I believe, over $3 billion of sales from the shows that he has created and the direct response to TV ads through multiple channels. Ron is a guy that I met a couple years ago because I read his book buy now. I forget what the subtitle was, but creative ways to get people to buy your stuff is a different title. I'll have Ron correct me on that. But what I was amazed by is it really gave a breakdown with case studies and how to about the way the direct response TV industry works. From how to follow, find and source products and find great ideas and understand if a product will work well to understanding how to test using direct response TV and then roll it out into retail. I mean, it was really an amazing book that I was fortunate enough to get a hold of him and negotiated an infomercial between one of my clients and Ron and his team. And I got to be on the set the entire time watching Ron work his magic scripting out this show that was going to that did air on national television and just see how much effort, detail, and genius went into crafting the message. So I'm really excited to bring Ron on the show today because since I know that most of my audience are entrepreneurs and marketing executives and have everything from small to big businesses, but most of you guys are involved in the digital online marketing space to some degree. So I wanted Ron to talk about how the. The really big world of direct response television and show creation can translate to folks selling things online or if they're looking to break into tv and if that makes a good decision for them or not. So without any further ado, Ron Lynch. How are you, buddy?
Wow, thanks. What a great introduction. I kind of want to meet that guy. If I die before you, will you speak at my funeral?
I'll do that. Hopefully. Hopefully that. Well, I was gonna say hopefully that doesn't happen, but wait a minute.
I think I'm a little older than you, so let's just say it happens in the natural course of things.
Couple years. But no, I mean, that's literally just. That was off the top of my head, and it's from the heart. I really. I enjoyed meeting you the first time I walked on the set with Drew, and I loved watching you work. And coming from a guy like myself who I've created a lot of offers and done a lot of video sales letters and slaved over the copy and how to create these 20 to 30 minute video sales letters and how much work that took. And one of the things that I. So it made me really appreciate when I watched you directing Drew's show, just how important language was, how important body language was, how important just all the little aspects were. And I knew that one day, look, I've got to sit down and tap into your expertise and find out how myself and other people can do what we're doing better. So thanks again for being on the show.
Sure. Thanks for having me. And I've gone through your other podcasts, and I've got to say I'm very honored to be in this collection of folks. If this is the only podcast you've heard from Brad, you need to go listen to the rest of them because there's a wealth of information at Bacon Rapids business.
I appreciate that. So let's talk a little bit about. Let's give a little bit more backstory to you because I want it to come from you. Like where.
Sure.
You know, the experience level you've got. So kind of break it down. How did you get started in the business?
I have Kind of a weird background that naturally drove me to this place. When I was in college, I was a very, I think, ambitious person. And I got my first patent for a product. There was an exercise product. When I was in college and wanted to make an infomercial, I had a job in a grocery store. I was a grocery store manager. And eventually I became a chief operating officer in that grocery chain and learn brick and mortar. But I always had this desire to want to advertise. The interesting thing about the grocery business is that it is a really narrow margin business. So you have to learn how to make money in the last 1% and you really have to learn how to sell. I learned all of the things of P and L and business mechanics from that industry. So when I jumped into making television commercials and infomercials specifically about 15 years ago, I had that kind of knowledge inside of me. I also had a background in filmmaking. I often tell people I was a failed child actor.
Did you have an actual spot or something on tv?
Yeah, I actually. My first job was I was hired by Robert Altman and I played a role in a movie called the Kane Mutiny Court Martial, which nobody probably saw, was a made for TV CBS version of the Herman Woke story. The Kane Mutiny Court Martial, which is a play that Herman Woke wrote. And it was released on TV about the same time as the Oliver north stuff was going on. Oh.
So nobody paid attention to that. They just.
Well, it was interesting because that's why Altman made the film was that it related very much topically to the Oliver north scenario. So out of that, I ended up getting a SAG card. Like my first audition. I got a job and got a SAG card. And then I went on to make another 13 movies with little tiny bit roles. But I always stayed on as a crew member, as a PA and learned how to make films. So here was the kind of the perfect storm of a filmmaking background and a retail background. And you put those two things together and you land in infomercials.
Nice.
So that's how I got started. A friend of mine owned an ad agency and I had written a movie and auctioned it to somebody, and he said, hey, you wrote a movie. Could you write a TV commercial? I said, sure. And I did. I wrote a commercial for Space Bag and it worked well. And so I changed careers and I became a creative director at an ad agency and really went after making infomercials for the next 15 years. And it's been a very fun and rewarding career.
Nice. So tell me about some of the other infomercials you've worked on. Just for other folks, frame of reference. Like as I said, you've worked with Billy Mays, right?
Yeah, I worked with Billy Mays. I launched Orange Glow with him. Had done a lot of other background spots with Billy as well from the creative side. Spent a lot of time with him. People think of him as being a pitch man. He's very good creative. He had very good ideas about offer and very good ideas about how to make big demos on tv. Exciting. He helped me a lot with one of my first hit shows called the Total Trolley which was a convertible ladder. It was a ladder, a step ladder, a four wheeled furniture dolly and a hand truck was one new tool and it was a tool that was built for women. So it was a unique category and we came up with incredible demos for that show. It actually won the infomercial of the year.
Really?
ERA Electronic Retailers association in our industry, which was gratifying and we sold a lot of step ladders.
That's fantastic.
So Total Trolley is one of my first shows. I worked with Kevin Harrington and Sean Faye on the Flavorwave Deluxe oven which is a. You've probably seen it on tv. It's kind of a glass dome oven. It almost looks like something you'd store a cake in.
No, I have one of those. Mine is Sakura, but it's one of those like infrared or convection whatever.
Yep, it's a convection infrared oven. Went on to do Smartware, which was the first flexible silicone bakeware sold on television that was successful. Four or five people had tried it and we figured out how to do it. So that was exciting. Just a litany of products. Light Relief, which actually just came off the air after 14 years on the air with Robert Wagner. It's an infrared pain relief device.
You worked on that. That was yours?
Yeah, I actually created that show and have the design patent on that product.
Really? That's fantastic.
I'm the design for that product. So that was a cool product to be in involved with. And then that segued into a lot of larger companies products. People found out about us and we ended up working with companies like Johnson and Johnson and S.C. johnson wax and Coleman. So we've launched, I think I've probably done 300 shows, 100 long form infomercials, 200 short form infomercials, and strategy for a bunch of companies as well in the space.
Wow, fantastic. So that's now speaking to you listeners out there. This is why I think you should pay very close attention. I mean, Ron has worked on some of the biggest brands as well as launching things like the Light Relief, like the Total Trolley companies that it's not. These companies don't have hundred of million dollar marketing budgets. So when you're doing this, you have to, you have to make sure you get things right. And as I mentioned to you in the past, it's kind of funny, every time in my business, I've come out with an offer, and most of my colleagues do who focus on Internet marketing primarily. We'll come out with an offer and spend a 500 or $1,000 test budget on Facebook or whatever just to see if it works. But give me an idea. So when we came out with Drew Canole's infomercial, you guys did a test back in.
