
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 7, 1994                   TAG: 9407080033
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: PHILADELPHIA                                LENGTH: Medium

WILL THERE BE INFOMERCIAL OSCARS?

John and Clare Kogler flew in from Southern California, got to their room at the Rittenhouse Hotel, and turned on the TV at 1:30 a.m. Monday to see what infomercials were playing. They caught Marshall Sylver's ``Passion, Profit and Power,'' a new self-help, self-hypnosis package of audio tapes, on two channels.

``It's a good show,'' John Kogler said admiringly.

``Thin, rich and beautiful is what they're selling in direct marketing. He's got two out of three. Thin and rich is what he hits,'' added Clare, his wife.

The Koglers should know. They bill themselves as the Siskel & Ebert - movie critics - of the infomercial business, the estimated $1 billion-a-year industry built on 28-minute 30-second advertisements designed to resemble familiar kinds of TV shows: the talk show, the news show, the demo, the ``story-mercial.''

Once infomercials were considered a way to peddle cancer-curing crystals and cellulite creams to insomniacs. But increasingly, the Koglers say, long-form TV ads are showing up in daylight hours, are being used in conjunction with retail sales and are being used to build image and snare customers for such blue-chip clients as Fidelity Investments, Volkswagen and Texaco.

``It is a powerful, powerful tool,'' said Clare Kogler, in Philadelphia to address an advertising group.

The Texaco ad, for example, which spins the story of a couple driving Route 66, ``takes an ugly oil company, humanizes it and makes it warm and fuzzy,'' she said. ``Texaco could never have made you feel friendly towards an oil company in 60 seconds.''

John Jordan Kogler and Clare Whitney Kogler, both 52 years old, own Jordan Whitney Inc., a Tustin, Calif., company that issues weekly and monthly reports on the infomercial industry. They rank infomercials by how much broadcast and cable time they buy, and they snappily criticize ads and products.

Clare Kogler is a former speech pathologist who created a direct marketing company about 12 years ago. In the mid-'80s, after the Federal Communications Commission dropped restrictions on how much commercial time could be aired in an hour of television, John Kogler left his work as a real-estate lawyer and joined her. Within a few years, they had stopped making infomercials and begun critiquing them.

Now they chronicle such commercial oddities as the ``Mop Wars,'' a slugfest between the EZ Mop, the Smart Mop and the Dyno-Mop, all $29.95 - and all of which will probably die when cheaper knock-offs hit the retail store, they say.

They specialize in arcane knowledge, figuring out why Victoria Jackson can sell $180 million in makeup while Dolly Parton bombed. Their theory: Parton came across as a ``hired gun'' instead of a ``true believer.'' Said Clare Kogler: ``I love Dolly Parton, but I wasn't going to buy it. Keep your day job, Dolly.''

John Kogler, who watches six videotapes at high speed simultaneously on a bank of televisions in his den, sees Mike Levey, the sweatered host of the ``Amazing Discoveries'' series, as the ``Jimmy Stewart of the infomercial.''

``He's the guy next door,'' added Clare Kogler. ``He asks the questions the viewer would like to ask.''

All this feel-good persuasiveness generates big money. The industry claims $1 billion in sales, but that doesn't include retail sales at discount stores, which can be six to 10 times higher. Regal Communications in Philadelphia sold about 500,000 Sisan steam irons via infomercials - and five million in stores, the Koglers say.

Nor does it count the impact of home-shopping networks, where a popular star can spark wildfire sales. Victoria Jackson sold $1.2 million in makeup during two weekend shows on QVC, which now has its own unit to develop infomercials.

The Koglers' reports, known as the JW Greensheets, don't come cheap - $3,000 a year for the monthly version, $13,000 a year for the weekly, both printed on deep green paper that makes photocopying difficult.

``Many in the industry view them as an objective third party to see what's good about a show and what's not good about a show,'' said David G. Savage, a spokesman for the National Infomercial Marketing Association.

While they don't use thumbs-up, thumbs-down, the Koglers don't hesitate to identify a bomb. They panned a new infomercial for ``Yolf'' - yard golf - as the ``Howard the Duck'' of infomercials.

Said Clare Kogler: ``By the end of it, I was ready to yarf.''

by CNB