The cosmetics firm Avon will come calling on TV, recruiting sales representatives with its first-ever infomercial debuting this weekend.
After its initial appearance on Oxygen on Saturday morning, the half-hour commercial for troubled Avon Products Inc. will be shown repeatedly on Oxygen, Lifetime and USA.
Deborah Norville and financial guru Suze Orman are featured, but the infomercial is dominated by testimonials from women who sell Avon’s products. The company wants to increase its base of 500,000 sales representatives in the United States.
“We saw it as an opportunity because of the times we’re in,” said Geralyn Brieg, president of Avon North America.
Avon announced a restructuring with a freeze on salaries and hiring two months ago. The company sells more than three-quarters of its cosmetics overseas, where sales have been hurt by a stronger dollar.
The project is also an example of the growing acceptance of i nfomercials, once an advertising form reserved for cheesy products.
“We really wanted to explore how to do it in a quality way,” Brieg said, “and I think the image of infomercials as being something of a hard sell is really outdated.”
Brieg said the company was motivated to do something more on television after an appearance by its president on ABC’s “Good Morning America” last November. The TV appearance alone caused a large jump in the number of people calling to inquire about selling Avon products, she said.
She would not pinpoint a target on how many new sales representatives Avon hopes to gain with the infomercial.
“Recruiting is 50 percent of what we focus on at Avon,” she said. “It’s the moral equivalent for a retailer of having more stores open.”
Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey Launch Production House 34North
Executive producers Ron Cicero and Bo Clancey have teamed to launch 34North. The shop opens with a roster which includes accomplished directors Jan Wentz, Ben Nakamura Whitehouse and Mario Feil, as well as such up-and-coming filmmakers as Glenn Stewart and Chris Fowles.
Nakamura Whitehouse, Feil and Fowles come over from CoMPANY Films, the production company for which Cicero served as an EP for the past nearly five years.
Director Wentz had most recently been with production house Skunk while Stewart now gains his first U.S. representation.
EP Clancey was freelance producing prior to the formation of 34North. He and Cicero have known each other for some 25 years, recently reconnecting on a job directed by Fowles. Cicero said that he and Clancey “want to keep a highly focused roster where talent management can be one on one--where we all share in the directors’ success together.”
Clancey also brings an agency pedigree to the new venture. “I started at Campbell Ewald in accounts, no less,” said Clancey. “I saw firsthand how much work agencies put in before we even see a script. You have to respect that investment. These agency experiences really shaped my approach to production--it’s about empathy, listening between the lines, and ultimately making the process seamless.”
34North represents a meeting point--both literally and creatively. Named after the latitude of Malibu, Calif., where the idea for the company was born, it also embraces the power of storytelling. “34North118West was the first GPS-enabled narrative,” Cicero explained. “That blend of art and technology, to captivate an audience, mirrors what we do here--create compelling work, with talented people, harnessing state-of-the-art... Read More