Their ad buy has obviously changed, because even though they’ve been on TV somewhere for most of 2008, all of a sudden, the Shamwow late-night TV spots are intersecting with our networks. In honoring the host of the Shamwow commercial, Vince Offer, with October’s ‘Gamey’, we honor a couple of great American traditions: Late night TV spots made on the cheap but with an aesthetic we have come to appreciate as its own kind of pulp genre…and the pitchmen moving the merch. The ginzu knife demo’ers and the guys who suck bowling balls with vacuum cleaners and Suzanne Sommers, and Richard Simmons, and Ron Popeil and Ed McMahon, and Vince McMahon and Jim McMahon — there should be a special wing in the TV Hall of Fame for these characters, and for their fictional counterparts like Willy Wonka, Willy Loman and Professor Harold Hill. Vince Offer, wearing the headset that is just as mandatory to a boardwalk hawker like him as a face mask is to a hockey goalie, is a classic of the breed.
Offer, an actor, comic and Scientology apostate who first came to fame in around May of this year on the Canadian Home Shopping Network, changed the Shamwow game. Analyzed as improvisation, here’s how he does it:
1) Energy. Vince Offer is ‘on’, and there is not a millisecond of his performance where that energy drops off. To the contrary, it builds. It is the kind of energy that commands attention. I mean, he is selling what is basically an inert object. It doesn’t do anything that’s visually or emotionally compelling, like catch fish, or have any emotional resonance like weight loss formulas do. And it’s not like all of us haven’t seen a product that soaks up spills before. Nothing new there. No, the Shamwow has only as much energy and compelling-ness to it as Vince Offer can give it. He knows that the scene is about him and his relationship with the audience, and he claims it strongly, with 100% conviction.
2) Movement. Vince is one of the most animated characters you’re going to see in any medium. There is always something moving with him. Eyebrows, hands, shoulders, mouth–all of it is in play. Your eye is drawn from one beat to the next. He’s quick. “You getting this, Camera Guy?”, the most memorable line in the spot, is there to underscore just how quick he is. Offer’s movement leads the camera and the eye. This gives the Shamwow spots a kinetic quality that borders on Japanese TV commercial style.
3) Depth and Complexity. This is a nuanced point that maybe only experienced improvisers will appreciate, so the rest of you please bear with me for a sec, or skp to #4. Vince Offer has an edge to his character that can only come from the life happening outside the confines of his pitch. Call the quality he brings to the pitch ’sincere bullshit’. Call it whatever you want, because it is open to interpretation that way. Dennis Hopper once explained to me that what made James Dean such a great actor was that Dean ‘used everything’. Hopper said Dean once told him that the world in which he acted did not end at the periphery of the camera’s range, that everything was in play, right down to something the script girl might do, like smoke a cigarette, just out of the camera’s range. Dean, said Hopper, would let that affect him in some way, and become part of his performance. Though the audience would have no idea what stimulated Dean’s reaction, it added a dimension to his performance that they sensed and appreciated. The same thing is true of Vince Offer. From what I can see, this guy has led a pretty interesting life, and you get the sense he’s bringing it with him to the Shamwow show. Note that some people are put off by Offer’s performance, and that the complexity of his character is different from the Industrial Age emphasis on ‘likeability’ embodied by a pitchman like Ronald Reagan and has more to do with the Networked World imperative of ‘authenticity’ embodied in a character like Richard Branson.
4) Heightening. All good improvisation heightens as it goes. What is casual becomes intense. What is low key becomes high pitched. Slow becomes quick and trivial becomes significant. In the hands of skilled improvisers no scene diminishes, ever. The ability to heighten can make the difference between an audience who sits up in its seats, and one who slacks back and checks text messages. Offer treats the audience’s attention like a dog treats a bone. It is his, and he is not about to give it up. Heightening ensures that the audience stays along for the ride.
These four principles–energy, movement, depth and heightening–should be in play in your sales scenes, or in any other business scenes that require a high level of engagement with your audience.
You don’t have to have Vince Offer’s commodity-trader’s kind of energy. But be a presence in your scenes by focusing on the objective and the underlying game.
However you move, be aware of that movement and use it for emphasis.
Experience your life in a way that informs your performance.
And heighten. The transformative experience for your audience can only come about when you take them somewhere they’ve never been before, or show them the mundane (like a chamois cloth) in a new light. You can only do that by moving the scene forward. Expanding it. Exploring its themes. Adding information. There are a thousand ways to do it, and it all comes under the header of heightening.
Tags: Commercials, Complexity, Depth, Emotion, GameChanger of the Month, Heightening, Movement, October 2008, Scientology, Shamwow, television, TV, Vince Offer