Give A Legend His Due!

By Gavin Ballas
EVP Growth + Joint Head of Client Services

Last week the marketing world lost a legend. The man who could sell anything, inventor, marketing genius, and King of the Infomercial,Ron Popeil, passed away last week at the age of 86.

Those of us who earn our living in the performance marketing space really should take a moment and thank Ron Popeil for helping to bring direct marketing into electronic media.

When I worked for Ron Popeil, I was also a graduate business student at USC. A Professor of Entrepreneurship shared with me how much he greatly admired and respected Ron Popeil’s efforts and success and felt there was a lot all businesses could learn from Ron Popeil. So every year when USC wanted to celebrate their Entrepreneur of the Year, my professor wanted to nominate Ron Popeil.

Sadly, this well-meaning Professor never nominated him… he just felt his colleagues wouldn’t accept the nomination and would laugh at the Professor for even suggesting such a thing.

Well, I’d say Mr. Popeil got the last laugh.

While many of his products and sales demonstrations may seem rather goofy, they were also incredibly effective. It was reported that Mr. Popeil left behind a $200M+ estate, fueled by over $1 Billion in sales of the Showtime Rotisserie alone.

There may be better measures of a life lived than the value of your estate but from a performance marketing standpoint building a $200M+ estate on the back of products like the Pocket Fisherman, Inside the Egg Scrambler, GLH-9 (hair in a spray can), and more…that’s not bad at all!

And to say what my old professor couldn’t, there is no doubt that all of us in this field have benefited from Ron’s work and can still learn quite a bit from the Infomercial King’s legacy.

So in honor of my one-time boss’s passing, I am pleased that the Influencer would like to once again share my article on the Five Things I Learned from Working For Ron Popeil. 

Ron Popeil – 1935 to 2021