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By JAY FITZGERALD
Marlboro's Advanced Results Marketing is smacking out product hit after product hit with its fast-growing TV marketing business featuring the latest household gizmos that consumers think they can't live without.
Last year, ARM said it sold nearly 11 million of its battery- free Faraday Flashlights via its one- to two-minute paid ads on national cable and local television stations. The total so far: $30 million in direct sales from TV spots alone, with millions more from retail sales, according to the firm.
Now comes the battery-operated One Touch Can Opener, which ARM chief executive Victor Grillo says could top $45 million in sales this year.
Grillo, a Framingham native and Bentley College grad, said the Faraday Flashlight was last year's top-selling product for so- called "short form" direct-response ad pitches. Now the One Touch Can Opener could also be a big national winner.
"Sometimes you get it right," laughed Grillo, whose 15-year-old firm spends tens of millions of dollars a year on fast-paced, breathless TV ads touting the latest and greatest products that a television viewer better buy RIGHT NOW by picking up the phone and ordering.
Advanced Results Marketing likes to own or jointly own the patents on products it hawks. The Faraday Flashlight and One Touch Can Opener are made by a Hong Kong company, but they're distributed from ARM directly from its warehouse in Marlboro.
Perhaps you've seen commercials for the flashlight, which a person shakes to make it shine - relying on a magnet traveling through a copper coil to produce an electric charge to power the light. No batteries needed. ARM sells two for $19.95.
Like many products, Grillo said he wasn't sure if the flashlight would sell well like, oh, the popular Ginsu 2000 knives or the triple-edged windshield wiper blades ARM has hawked in the past.
But along came last fall's hurricanes - and, well, the flashlight sold very well.
"Believe me, it was more luck than talent," said Grillo, who started his business selling cut-through-anything scissors on Channel 38 during Red Sox games in the early 1990s.
Does everything sell? Nope. There are duds, even if Grillo thought they'd be hits. Take ARM's "indestructible" work gloves, made of a Kevlar-like material, which Grillo thought would fly off warehouse shelves. "Sales tanked," he said.
Other times he literally spots a dog when people try to convince him to pitch their inventions.
Grillo, 40, said a man once came to his office with a new "doggie dryer" - which looked and worked like a vacuum cleaner, except it blew air rather than sucked air. The man took his pet poodle, poured a glass of water on the pooch, stuffed it in a plastic bag, attached the bag to the "doggie dryer" nozzle and . . . the bag started filling up with smoke, said Grillo.
"Everything was going wrong but he kept going on with his sales pitch," said Grillo. "He took the dog out of the bag. It looked half dead and he almost had to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on it. That was one of those items that didn't get very far."
Whether it's a low or a high moment, like with the current $19.95 can opener, Grillo said he enjoys his work.
"I have the best job in the world," he said.
CAPTION: TELEVISION HITS: Marlboro-based Advanced Results Marketing's latest product is the One Touch Can opener, above, which is battery operated and quite portable. For its part, another ARM product, the Faraday Flashlight, needs no batteries at all. Last year, ARM said it sold nearly 11 million of the flashlights via its one- to two-minute paid ads on national cable and local television stations. STAFF PHOTOS BY DAVID GOLDMAN
(c) 2006 Boston Herald. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.
