ShamWow: A jerk you'll want to buy rags from. | Hacker News Reader

ShamWow: A jerk you'll want to buy rags from.

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12 pointsacangiano15 comments

I think I was too busy trying to figure out who in their right mind would try to sell something named Sham-anything to actually pay attention to the pitch.

I just can't shake the feeling that the name is intentional and a big joke on the consumers.

The ad looked fake to me. There is no way it soaked up all that cola that quickly; I think he preloaded the rag with cola.

A google search reveals that these things don't work at all.

Sometimes I think I'm too cynical ... but I haven't found this to ever be the case ;)

I saw the ad and the first thing I thought was "Sodium polyacrylate!!!"

They use it in all sorts of consumer goods, but I guess not here.

The trick is the almost-invisible edit as they zoom into the underside view of the cola-stained rug.

Exactly.

When Seth Godin talks about how companies should be remarkable, he usually focuses on industrial sectors that are currently en vogue (technology), or boutique premium services/goods. He excludes about 95% of businesses, which sell mundane goods like vacuum cleaners.

I guess guys like this are the answer to how you should go about selling vacuums, rags, and industrial pipe fittings?

Dyson, instead of crazy late night marketing, just plain built a technologically better vacuum and marketed it as a Ferrari of vacuums. There's plenty of ways to sell household goods without resorting to the infomercial style of ads.

I briefly had a job repairing vacuum cleaners years ago.

Dyson vacuums are seriously overpriced pieces of junk, but few people realize it because they don't see them broken in the same ways all the time. A few notable points on their really shoddy engineering:

- The power cord was not a heavy enough gauge for the current the motor was pulling. I was amazed to find that the cord itself got hot -- not warm, but hot -- while running the vacuum. This happened on every one I worked on, so it wasn't a random bad motor.

- Instead of a plain ol' belt-driven brush, Dysons use a belt-driven brush with a NEW! FANCY! CLUTCH! at the other end. To save you the trouble of ever having to replace a two-dollar belt, they added in an 80-dollar part that cost an hours' technician labor to replace when it (inevitably) failed.

- Everything was plastic. Notably, the plastic rotating brush rode directly on a set of plastic rails in the front housing piece. Why is this bad? Well, it works OK so long as everything is perfectly aligned, but if for some reason the brush catches something and comes out of alignment while spinning, then it eats right through the plastic carriage. The replacement cost for a new front nose piece, plus brush, including labor, was around two hundred bucks if I remember right.

I will grant the Dyson uses a clever filter system that I wish more vacuums used. For example, its motor is guarded by a spongy HEPA filter which prevents it from falling victim to all the fine-grained dust that destroys the bearings in everyone else's vacuums.

The downside is, we had more than one customer that didn't wait long enough before reinstalling the sponge that they had just rinsed, and so completely destroyed their motor. Dyson specifically refuses to cover that particular error in their warranty.

...And that's more than you ever wanted to know about Dyson vacuums. :-)

I'll add a quick rebut: my wife exclusively used Dyson vacuums in her housecleaning business. Sure they cost more, but they were so much faster than standard vacuums, (and still much cheaper than say the Hoover industrial vacs) that the cleaning crew could get out of a house and on to the next job that much quicker. On average they lasted about a year before needing to be replaced. That's a year of heavy daily use, being wrestled in and out of vehicles and used by people who didn't pay for them.

We use a Dyson Animal at home (2 large, shedding dogs and 2 cats) -- the only remaining one from the business and the thing is phenomenal!

without resorting to the infomercial style of ads

Infomercials sell. You're right at the variety of sales techniques you can use to push product, but infomercials are one of the most effective mediums. It's like direct mail: we hate it, but from a business end, a well-crafted creative can produce a 20% conversion rate.

"He excludes about 95% of businesses, which sell mundane goods like vacuum cleaners."

I don't understand where you are getting this from. Most of Seth's books are about mundane products:

All Marketers are Liars, Purple Cow, The Big Moo, Free Prize Inside...

Most of his best blog posts are about mundane products too. When he talks about stuff in the news he likes to talk about web startups, but that's about it. If I had to sum of Seth's philosophy in one sentence, I'd say it's about taking mundane commodity products and making them remarkable.

ShomWow was the first commercial where I ever had to slap myself afterwards for even thinking about buying a product shown on TV. I even looked it up online because it looked far beyond "too good to be true" and off into "miraculous"...

I saw this ad on TV and had a similar response. (Didn't actually seriously consider buying it, but it's the first time I've ever been impressed by something on a late night infomercial.) I didn't realize so many others felt the same way. This guy must be really good.

He's a skinnier version of Billy Mays. They are both loaded (Mays almost unfathomably so, he drives around in a Rolls).

must...not...produce...credit card...from...wallet

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