The Bose Wave Radio infomercial
It's 3 a.m.
The idle television viewer lies half-awake, straddling the boundary between consciousness and slumber, clawing through the scant morsels of entertainment late-night television has to offer.
He or she sits in the valley of the shadow of infomercials. There is little else available, and the extended commercial exudes a sick, train-wreck sort of attraction. Sure, we'll normally skip, mute, and videotape around 30-second commercials. But give us 30 straight minutes of advertising and it's "campy."
Most infomercials wallow in TV's worst attributes. They're loud, aggressive, jarring displays of crass consumerism, joyfully wallowing in a brand of hard-sell carnival hucksterism that 19th-century Americans only saw down on the boardwalk.
Not so the Bose Wave Radio infomercial.
First of all, Bose isn't explicitly trying to get you to buy their amazing Wave Radio. They just want you to try it, experience it, and fall in love with its rich, full, bass-boosted sound. And then, perhaps, consider purchasing the device.
Secondly, the sort of cheap, splashy sets and effects that mar the face of almost every infomercial made are nowhere to be seen. If you're not at a classy but empty jazz club, you're at a concert hall, or slouching around someone's drippingly yuppified living room or kitchen.
Finally, you never hear the price of the system, although you're invited to make just 12 easy payments.
Beware a radio that requires 12 easy payments, particularly when they turn out to be $29 each ($42 for the CD-player version.) That's $349 for a small radio, and $499 for a CD player.
The price alone should indicate that the Bose Wave Radio is a very special kind of consumer product, requiring a very special marketing approach. Its infomercial is classy, quiet, clever and haughty. It's gentle where other infomercials are crass. It's repetitive, but not jarringly so.
But before analyzing the pitch, it's important to make one thing clear: The Bose Wave Radio really is a hell of a device. Pundits and scholars can debate how much it's really worth, but it's a remarkable little thing.
Bose once held a Wave Radio demonstration in Boston's South Station, an enormous vaulted complex that is exactly as majestic as a major city's central train station should be.
The radio — which is a little longer than a foot — filled the main part of the station with sound. The demonstrator was actually asked to turn it down. Strangers leapt and danced in front of it. Idle diners and dining idlers were amused and soothed. The thing ain't no hoax. It has power and gravitas to spare.
That said, the radio costs $349. How do you sell it? First, you get Herbie Hancock, legendary jazz musician and approachably lovable black guy, to be your pitchman. You have Hancock dispense inoffensive patter, tinkling, jazzy piano bits and various musicianly statements about sound quality as you're led through a dazzling array of angles designed to make you forget how much the product costs.
These angles include...
Guilt: A classical musician and a top-notch sound engineer are brought in at different points in the infomercial to tell you about all the nuance they put into their recordings — and how only a Bose Wave radio can get that nuance out. At one point, the classical musician looks as though she'll cry unless you listen to her music on a Bose.
Snob appeal: One of the infomercial's repeated shots is of an attractive, middle-aged woman turning on the Bose and then walking back through her well-appointed living room to a group of somewhat glamorously dressed people who are standing around quietly and drinking wine. Staid? Sure. Boring? Sure. But these people are plush.
Science!: The patented wave-guide technology is explained and explored by serious-looking guys in lab coats.
Art: "It helps with the creative process," says one middle-aged, arguably creative-looking white woman.
Focused musical taste: The commercial is clear: Things you might listen to on your Bose Wave radio include serious jazz, classical music, "rock and roll" (one mention) and NPR. Things you implicitly WON'T listen to include hip-hop, techno, indie rock and any form of music actively pioneered after 1960.
The infomercial bears down on its target demographic like a laser. Well-educated, affluent suburban whites like jazz music. They actively enjoy nice, safe, Herbie Hancock. They like nuance. They don't like hearing about gauche little things like the price of the item they're about to buy.
This is not an amateurish infomercial. This infomercial is a piece of art, albeit one with a heavy marketing bent, and no redeeming social values. If most infomercials are shotgun blasts fired at anyone loopy enough to watch, the Bose Wave Radio infomercial is a heat-seeking missile, bearing down on 5-10 percent of the American public and blasting them out of their seats.
Consumers are like gazelles. Marketeers are our predators. Smart gazelles are advised to take a look at the tactics that the Bose Wave Radio infomercial deploys — if you're in their sights, they'll mess you up.
— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)
