The art of the slow burn

I'm not big on prognostications.

Never had a stomach for folks who claim to know what's in store for the future. Most of them are uninformed. Most, it seems, have some hidden agenda. Plus, there's plenty of evidence that people who make predictions about the future of advertising are just simply full of shit.

Remember Vines?

Is anybody using FourSquare?

Do you Slack? Or know anyone who does Slack?

And despite all this, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest the future of our business is infomercials. I'm not just saying this to be contrarian. I know the current talk is about 5 or 6 second commercials, pre-rolls and other such abbreviated horse-cockery.

Those people are idiots. And I've got the research and big data to prove it.

You see I  don't just consider myself America's Premier UnderEmployed 44 Year Old Freelance Copywriter. I think of myself as a focus group of one. And last week this focus group of one found itself mesmerized by a 30 minute long infomercial on the many wonders and benefits of wood pellet meat smoking.

More specifically, I found myself watching an entire half hour paid advertisement for the Traeger Grill. As a lifelong carnivore, I naturally have a built in interest in the preparation of briskets, Porterhouse steaks, pork shoulders and Santa Maria style tri-tips. But the folks at Traeger found a way to make my already watery mouth, even more water-ier.

Prior to this viewing I had never even heard of wood pellet cooking or automatic auger-controlled low-and-slow burning. But by the end of the show I was a bonafide expert. And it all made perfect sense.

Hell, if TV executives can make successful shows about people buying storage lockers or installing elaborate aquariums, it can't be that hard to hook people for 30 minutes and entice them with St. Louis Ribs slathered in tangy bourbon-based BBQ sauce. Mmmmmm, bourbon.

And that's the thing about these infomercials. They are incredibly persuasive. They inform, they entertain and they sell. And I've got a garage full of P90X, Insanity and Body Beast DVDs to prove it. I'm a sucker for these ads. And I'm most cynical man on earth, so says my wife.

I sincerely believe this is where the industry is going.

My friend Laura writes a blog on fashion and style and gets all kinds of free swag. But I don't want you thinking that I'm saying all this with the hope that the Traeger PR people will see this blog and comp me one of their $1000 grills. OK, maybe I am. But I still stand by my convictions about infomercials.

BTW, that new Traeger Timberline model with the wifi-enabled temperature control and 458 square inches of cooking capacity looks very cool.

And blogworthy.