Any ideas for a sales/marketing video for this (unique) product?

[Mark Suszko]

Well, it’s certainly not new. “Bug vac”s have been marketed for some time. Edmunds and Smithsonian and Discovery Channel I think all have sold variations as specimen collectors for little field scientists (kids). I think I saw them at blow-out prices at American Science and Surplus as well. Now, I have NOT seen one that has a built-in zapper. That’s your differentiator. You could use that in a demonstration. For example, ladybug beetles tend to invade homes thru crevices around window screens this time of year, looking for places to hibernate. You don’t WANT to kill them because they are beneficial garden insects, and if you smash them, they produce a bad smell. So the vac is a good idea for collecting these and sending them back to your garden. The second half of the demo, you can use it to pluck and roast a bad caterpillar off an outside bush, or some roaches off of a counter-top or something. The scourge everywhere these days seems to be bedbugs, so a lot of people would be interested in something aimed at getting those things. They hide in crevices during the day, so a vacuum-based method is the only way to get them out. But you’d have to be able to show the handheld unit is powerful enough to make that work, and that the zapper is 100 percent fatal to the beasties.

There you get into the downside of these product demos, in that to many people, anything to Do with bugs is disgusting, and the insinuation that they may have roach problems or bedbugs, well, forget it. They’d only buy it if it came by mail in a brown paper wrapper, like porn, so the neighbors don’t get wise. Typically in commercials, what is used to ease the unpleasantness in such a situation is to use animation, to give some psychological distance from the reality. You could mix live action with animation for the close-up of the action, and this would be like any of a hundred “as seen on TV” product demos out there. The animation could be CGI, or 2-d cel animation, could be rather realistic, or deliberately cartoony, depends how clinical vs. friendly the pitch is to be.

If this was worth something to you. send Ron $50 and I’m sure he’ll forward me my cut.:-)

[Scott Carnegie]

Animation, all animation.

http://www.MediaCircus.TV
Media Production Services
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

[Andrew Rendell]

Something that says “I’ve got bugs” to the world is going to be hard to shift, however good the product is. Perhaps a good approach might be: Has your dog picked up a flea from another dog? Zap it with our wonderful new product before it becomes a problem, and by the way, it also works with other types of bugs… (does it work for dog fleas?)