Today’s soundtrack is Gorillaz: Humanz.
I’m sitting on the beach in front of the hotel; my crocs are my desk on which my laptop rests. The sun above, the wind at my back, and the Pacific’s dull roar fill my senses with happiness.
Today I’m reading the preface and the first chapter of Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw, the newest addition to my book collection. I picked it up today at the Book Warehouse in Seashell, Oregon.
Gladwell prefaces the book by discussing what psychologists call “the other minds problem” (p. xv), the necessity of understanding that other peoples’ minds contain different thoughts, interests, and perspectives than our own. The eventual realization of this truth “is one of the great cognitive milestones of human development” (p. xvi). Still, even in adulthood, this concept fascinates us: we want to understand what it is like to be another person, and this curiousity is “one of the most fundamental of human impulses” (p. xvi). He says that the book’s title is inspired by his questioning both sides of a question: we can ask what goes on inside of the Dog Whisperer’s head, but what goes on inside of the dog’s head? We need to find out what the dog saw.
Gladwell closes his preface by saying that that the trick to finding ideas about what to explore and write about is to be convinced that “everyone and everything has a story to tell” (p. xix).
On to the stories.
The first chapter is titled “The Pitchman: Ron Popeil and the Conquest of the American Kitchen.”
Ron Popeil came from a long line of inventors and marketers who believed that inventors and marketers should be the same people. If a product was good enough, they believed, it would sell itself. Ron continued the family vision: development and marketing were one and the same to him; he would come up with an idea, prototype it until he felt it was perfect, and run it on an infomercial without bothering with focus groups or other kinds of marketing research.
Of course, this story is called “The Pitchman” for a reason. Pitchmen are salesmen. They are brilliant actors who can not only elicit applause but make people pull out their wallets. Ron’s cousin, Arnold, was a pitcher. Arnold discussed many of his marketing methods. Ron and Arnold once had a “sell-off” where they were neck-and-neck; Ron ultimately won by a hair, but both of them were proven to be expert salesmen. They knew how to make the product the star of the show; they knew how to show potential buyers the ways in which an item could be used, and how that would change the customers’ lives - in a good way.
Ron was one of the first pitchment to realize that television could do an even better job of making the product the star of the show. He was able to sell his father’s invention, the Veg-O-Matic, beyond their wildest expectations by making TV ads. This was necessitated by the high-volume output of the device; it was simply too pricey for pitchmen to demonstrate it all day to relatively small crowds - they would overspend their budget on vegetables!
When selling his rotisserie, Ron was obsessed with making sure that everything looked right: the chicken had to be just the right shade of golden brown; the front face had to be transparent; the glass had to be angled so that viewers could always watch the chicken cooking. He knew that buyers want to see the device working; they need to know that it is easy to use; they need to be walked through the various ways that a device can be used.
Ron’s relationship - if it can be called that - with his father was nonexistent. His father was an absent parent; all business, no time for family - not even time to include Ron in the family business. Still, Ron took inspiration from his father’s work ethic and his business model. Today, Ron has transcended his father’s vision and is still the best pitchman out there.
