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The Vicksburg Post Sunday, September 13, 2009 C5
Infomercial king Kevin Harrington testing the mainstream
CLEARWATER, Fla. (AP)
— In a sprawling studio, Kevin
Harrington is watching a TV
pitchman put a shapely model
through her paces on a new
exercise contraption soon
to be featured in a half-hour
infomercial.
The machine is all foldable
bars and straps and handles,
which can be used for 88 different
exercises. Harrington is
excited. He thinks the $99 item
is going to be a huge seller.
“It’s hard to look at that and
say ‘This is going to be the
next billion-dollar project,”’
Harrington says to a visitor.
“If it only does $250 million,
we’ll be happy.”
Harrington, who has produced
some of TV’s most
well-known infomercials, has
a knack for knowing what will
sell and how to sell it. He’s
made a vast fortune convincing
impulse-buying insomniacs
they just can’t do without
the latest kitchen gadget,
cleaning device or exercise
video. The latest spot is for
“Tony Little’s Private Trainer,”
named for the long-haired
“You can do it!” guy.
Harrington, seen on ABC’s
new show “Shark Tank,” claims
to have invented the infomercial
back in the mid-1980s. Today he
reigns over a marketing empire
that includes a truckload of “as
seen on TV” goods and ownership
in the Tampa-area studio
that cranks out the long-form
commercials.
“I call him an infomercial
visionary,” says Little, whose
Allen
Continued from Page C1.
Kevin Harrington watches fitness guru Tony Little in Clearwater, Fla.
boisterous TV pitches for
exercise gear and DVDs have
made him a celebrity. “He’s
very good at selecting the
right products, selecting the
right talent.”
Usually behind the curtain,
Harrington is stepping in front
of the cameras this year on
“Shark Tank,” a reality show
that has inventors and entrepreneurs
pitching products
to a snide panel of marketing
moguls. That led to him showing
off his St. Petersburg mansion
for Joan Rivers on a new
reality show called “How’d
You Get So Rich?”
His memoir — “Act Now!:
How I Turn Ideas Into Million
Dollar Products” — has
war, and now I’m gonna get
killed in Livingston, Ala.’”
He knew the war was
almost over and hoped it
would end while he was at
home. He and his friend
Charles O’Connor, also home
on leave, were walking along
Cherry Street when they saw
Joe Marsicano, a neighbor
from over on Main Street. He
had a son, Joe Jr., 18, and had
just received word that the
boy had been killed in action.
The two servicemen tried to
console him, and the three
sat on the curb crying.
When the war ended, Elmo
was at Tolar’s Cafe where
everyone there was “celebrating
full blast, including
me.”
Elmo’s mother told him that
during the war the ladies in
the area would gather on the
porch in the afternoon, and
the sight of a Western Union
boy on his bicycle would cast
a quietness over them, for
often that was an omen, as
the next of kin was notified
by telegram when someone
died in service. Twice,
his mother was notified that
Elmo’s brother Tommy had
been wounded. Another
friend, Toots Dennis, a
Marine, was home when his
mother got word of his death
— only Toots was there to
take the message!
After the war ended, Elmo
still had two years and three
months left to serve. He had
shore duty in San Diego for
a year, then was on board
the USS Compton during the
Cold War. He was discharged
Dec. 1, 1947, Radioman First
Class. He came home, bought
an Indian Chief motorcycle
and later a Buick Super convertible
and was “having the
time of my life.” He worked
for a civil engineering firm,
Clarke and Flohr, helping
survey the Vicksburg airport,
making $1 an hour. He
met Bertha “Bert” Nelson, a
nursing student at the Vicksburg
Hospital from Panana
City. They married Jan. 29,
1949.
Soon, he was hired by the
CAA (later called the FAA)
and assigned to Air Traffic
Control at Key West. He
transferred to Dallas, was
recalled by the Navy when
the Korean War broke out
and was discharged in January
1952.
In December 1953, Elmo
came home for his father’s
funeral, the day the tornado
hit, Dec. 5. He and his wife
worked at Mercy Hospital,
and Elmo recalls taking
the Rev. Aiken from Christ
Church to the hospital, and
helping carry several dead
children from the wreckage.
Along with hundreds of
others, he dug in the rubble
of collapsed stores searching
for bodies or survivors.
He transferred to Muscle
Shoals, Ala., Greenville, S.C.,
Augusta, Ga., and finally
to Jackson where he spent
six years at Hawkins Field
with the FAA and 16 at Jackson
International Airport.
He later went back to work
there for another year before
retiring with 37 years of government
service. He now
works three days a week,
“just for something to do.”
Though Emo has owned several
planes, he no longer
pilots. His license is still
valid, he said, but he hasn’t
had a current physical.
He taught flight instruction
and had two terrible aircraft
crashes, both crop dusters
that burned — but again he
survived.
In 1973, Bert lost her life
in a car accident. Elmo met
Katherine Williams from
Kosciusko, who owned a
plane; they married. Elmo
has three children by Bert.
Linda and Laura have followed
in her footsteps and
are RNs. Larry, like his dad,
is an air traffic controller.
Elmo recalls World War II
as the worst and the best of
times. He has many friends
he made in those days, but
also others were lost. Most of
the boys in his neighborhood
died, and Elmo said in all
there were about 35 boys he
knew from Vicksburg who
were casualties.
Something he wanted was a
memorial to all from Vicksburg
and Warren County
who lost their lives in the
war. He tried to get the Veterans
of Foreign Wars interested,
and in 1985 they put
him in charge of the project.
He was a one-man committee
who began making plans,
gathering names, spending
untold hours and 26 trips to
Vicksburg to make sure the
job was done. Finally, on a
day in May 1986, with generals
and elected officials present,
the Army Band playing,
and a flyover, the monument
in the Rose Garden
on Monroe Street was
dedicated.
Nearby, a woman sat in
front of the old library building,
sobbing, and Elmo went
to try to console her. It was
Joe Marsicano’s mother; he
was the 18-year-old boy who
had died 41 years earlier, just
before the war ended. She
said her tears were of joy,
for she had reached up and
touched Joe’s name and had
a feeling that she was actually
touching him.
“We both had a good cry,”
Elmo said.
Whenever Elmo comes
to Vicksburg, he drives by
the monument and reflects
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Signing at 2:00 p.m.
The associated press
just been published. And he
can’t stop talking about a deal
that places one of his products
— the Flowbee, a haircutting
device that vacuums up the
locks as they are shorn — in a
movie that has Kevin Spacey
playing an inventor who peddles
stuff on informercials.
A likable, fast-talking
wheeler-dealer who formed
his first company as a teenager,
Harrington sees his mainstream
exposure as an opportunity
not only to discover new
products he can market on TV
but to earn a degree of respect
for his work.
The industry has already
gotten a boost from Billy Mays
and Anthony Sullivan, infomercial
pitchmen who starred
in a reality TV show on the
Discovery Channel. Mays died
of a heart attack in June but is
still being seen in ads.
“In the last couple of years, I
think the industry has gotten
a little more credit for being
critical,” says Harrington,
whose wiry build and blondetipped
crew cut make him
look much younger than his
52 years. “It’s not as schlocky
as it used to be, for sure.”
An expert on consumer
behavior echoed Harrington’s
assessment.
“He brought that sense of
legitimacy and the idea that
informercials are not necessarily
hucksterism, they are
on the names of his friends
carved there. He’s justifiably
proud of his role and of the
personal letter he received
from President Ronald
Reagan.
Though he has some
friends still around who were
in World War II, he says, he
is “damned near the last of
the Mohicans.”
•
Gordon Cotton is an author and historian
who lives in Vicksburg.
Lorelei Books
1103 Washington Street
in historic downtown
Vicksburg
601-634-8624
Visit www.loreleibooks.com
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meeting the legitimate needs
of legitimate consumers,”
says Thomas C. O’Guinn, a
University of Wisconsin marketing
professor. “He made
it OK to buy stuff from informercials.
He kind of added a
little class to it.”
Harrington, married with
two sons, is doing OK for a
guy whose staggering business
losses once forced him
into bankruptcy and who still
falls flat with two out of every
three products he launches.
He started working young,
first in his father’s taverns and
restaurants in his native Cincinnati.
Before long he was
peddling high chairs to pregnant
ladies, car rustproofing,
air conditioners and weightloss
products.
The way Harrington tells it,
the informercial was born in
1984 when he paid a Cincinnati
cable TV station for cheap
blocks of overnight air time to
market small business opportunities
to potential franchisees.
Soon he was buying dead
air time in markets all over
the country and on the fledgling
Discovery Channel.
Others, like Ron Popeil, had
used shorter television spots
to market products directly to
viewers, but Harrington says
the program-length pitch was
his innovation.
His 1987 informercial helped
generate millions of dollars
in sales for a vacuum foodstorage
system called the
Food Saver. At a Philadelphia
home show, he found a guy
named Arnold Morris mesmerizing
a crowd with how
his kitchen knives could cut
through nails and aluminum
cans. He filmed him doing his
pitch, and the knives with the
surgical steel blades became a
phenomenon in the so-called
“direct response” marketing
industry.
Harrington’s infomercials
generated millions in sales
for hand-hammered Chinese
woks, kitchen mixers and carwashing
systems, the latter of
which gave Mays his first TV
exposure. In the early 1990s, he
was the first to take informercials
to international markets.
He says he’s launched more
than 500 products accounting
for $4 billion in sales.
“He moves faster and thinks
bigger than the average entrepreneur,”
says Verne Harnish,
an author and businessgrowth
consultant who once
commissioned a case study
of Harrington for an executive
education program at
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
IF PATIENTS HAD A WAND
If dental patients could wave a
magic wand, many might wish that
the discomfort associated with an
injection of local anesthetic would
disappear. In fact, it is not the prick
of the needle so much as the pressure
and volume of fluid being
injected into the gums and soft tissues
that some find so uncomfortable.
Understanding this phenomenon
can help patients realize why
the computer-controlled local anesthesia
injection system known as
The Wand can provide a more comfortable
and effective anesthetic
delivery. The Wand utilizes a microprocessor
to automatically compensate
for different tissue densities and
deliver anesthetic at a constant pressure
and volume that is typically
below the pain threshold of a
patient, resulting in greater comfort.
By using the Wand delivery system,
better pre-numbing topical
anesthetic, and an improved dental
anesthetic, we can come about as
Remarkable People. Remarkable Care.
ABOUT DR. TICE
• Experienced in treatments of diabetic foot problems,
rheumatoid arthritis foot problems and bunions
• Completed podiatric surgical residency at St. Michael’s
Medical Center in Newark, NJ
• Completed podiatric surgical residency at the
Presbyterian Medical Center of the University of
Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia, PA
LEARNING
Dr. Thomas’
Dental Update
by Brent Thomas DMD, PA
Central Mississippi Medical Center
is proud to welcome
Elizabeth
close to “painless” dentistry as medically
possible! Our practice is dedicated
to offering the best comprehensive
dental treatment available,
and our focus is always on you and
your needs. At the office of C.
BRENT THOMAS, DMD, PA, we
provide gentle dental care for the
entire family. Do you have dental
problems that need professional
attention? Please call us to schedule
an appointment. Our staff is made
up of well-trained professionals who
work together as a team to bring
you the highest quality treatment in
a warm, caring setting.
P.S. The Wand provides a flow of
anesthetic ahead of the needle to
numb the site of insertion to minimize
patient discomfort.
DR. BRENT THOMAS DMD, PA
Cosmetic & General Dentistry
1805 Mission 66 • 601-638-2361
Tice, D.P.M.
• Received Medical Degree from Temple University School
of Podiatric Medicine, Philadelphia, PA
• Member, American Podiatric Medical Association
• Fellow, American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons
• Member, American Diabetes Association
• Licensed in Mississippi
Appointments can be made
by calling 601-376-2963.
through Experimentation
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Age 2 Years - 10th Grade
Primary Montessori Class & A Beka Curriculum
After School Care
Providing A Real-life Education in a Christ-Centered Environment.
6889 Paxton Road • 601-634-0092
1850 Chadwick Drive | JACKSON | 601-376-1000 | CentralMississippiMedicalCenter.com