Our recent press release resulted in some nice media coverage and interest. It also led some not-so-interesting requests.
The show was called Living in Style and the production company is East Shore Productions. According to them they contacted us to incorporate Essentia into one of their shows. Sounds interesting right?
Not so interesting when you see these examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8FV8WUMkkc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vceWDo0h5dg
Large broadcast corporation logos such as NBC, FOX, BET, ESPN2, A&E and Discovery etc are on their website.
They requested a small payment which was meant to demonstrate “our commitment” which we have elected to ignore.
They neglected to mention the show felt like an infomercial :-s
No thank you “Living in Style” 
11 responses so far ↓
1 J Bass // Nov 7, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Did you think that Living in Style was for real or another TV infomercial company.
2 jason // Nov 7, 2007 at 4:25 pm
We thought it was an actual show, not a show composed of infomercials. Their approach was misleading. The shows seem to be well done. It just wasn’t right for us.
3 Donna // Feb 6, 2008 at 10:51 am
I was just contacted by East Shore Productions and the commitment fee is $5,900.00. I wasn’t very impressed with the web site and thought I’d do some more research on them. I’m glad I found your site…
4 ben // Feb 12, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I think it’s a scam … you pay $6k to get onto a show that runs a once in small markets at dead times of day. I’ve been pursued by these companies a lot, and for some reason, they are all based in Florida. In general, we’ve learned the hard way to be very careful with anyone who asks for money up front and any company based in Florida. I think they think small companies will think “Wow, they are going to put me on TV!” and have stars in their eyes. Notice nobody does repeat business with these guys — hear or see of any happy repeat customers?
5 James // Mar 28, 2008 at 8:04 pm
In the marketing world, this is called “pay for play”. If informercials weren’t so damn effective, they would not be on air. Ask QVC! The market is huge. Also, just so I make this thorough, $6000 is a drop in the bucket compared to what it takes to buy aire time and produce a 20min production piece with so many moving parts. Those “Bam” or “Oxy-Clean” infomercials are $20,000. So consider this a deal. And, they air 20 times during a season with over 75 contracted stations. Since you get to keep the montage, that is worth it, as you can use the montage forever. Good luck in trying to get your product on the TV any other way.
6 Joel // May 8, 2008 at 10:35 am
TV is dead James. online mediums are the future. You’re better off taking the $6 grand and making your own (longer than 2 min.) video and posting online via your own website or youtube. This way, you control the content and the audience.
7 R.G.Parrish // Jun 13, 2008 at 2:40 pm
It isn’t so much a scam and is still a good advertising opportunity. It is the way they go about things. They call and make you think you hit it big and then drop the ball. It is disapointing! They should consider an up front approach with the possibility of a sale instead of turning off the customer by making them feel uncomfortable. They may still get a sale in the future when the customer is more financially prepared. Let’s not forget that late night infomercials still make millionaires.
8 Keith Evans // Jul 10, 2008 at 11:07 am
They called me too, sounded exciting to be on a TV show, but the salesperson did not know anything about my product. Strange, but she wanted to feature me for only 115 seconds? At $5900 I advised her the cost was WAY too high because she could not easily provide samples of video, explain who and what they are, as well as give me current SATISFIED customers!
I did not mind the informercial approach, but her demographic and geographic coverage on about 200 areas on the Ion network was not good for our product.
Thank you Essential Direct, Google, and the power of the web!
9 Carlos // Jul 18, 2008 at 2:47 pm
I did buisness with them and they were straight up front about the dollars$$$. I have done plenty of marketing on the web and tv and $6,900 dollars for a Holiday Show on the ION network airing 20 times over 80 million household reach and they do all the production and hire the talant, and I can still keep the video segment and upload it on the web for additional exposure, WAS GREAT!!!! They even pay GOOGLE to have them pop up first.. just check it out…go to GOOGLE and under the VIDEO portion type “Living in Style” and you will see for your self…many videos have been seen over 30K times within a year. That is smart pay for play….GReat investment… and they are not paid placement… TV guide showed them as “Living in Style”. I was very satisfied because I had done my homework before hand..and all my expectations were clear… sorry for you guys…
10 Jonie // Aug 11, 2008 at 10:45 am
If all you want is TV exposure, produce the commercial yourself and buy tv ads through Google. I’m buying ads right now at $1 per 1000 viewers. For the $6000 fee they are charging, I could feature my commercial in front of 6,000,000 viewers on the exact time slots and programs I want.
As for the cost of producing a commercial– I produced it myself in Flash, hired a professional voice talent to record audio/music, and I was out of pocket $400 for a 30 second commercial.
So for $6400 I could have complete control over where my commercial airs, reach 6,000,000 viewers, and carefully test sales.
Or I could hire these guys to produce an infomercial that airs a couple of times at 3 am.
Pretty easy call for me.
11 Jonie // Aug 11, 2008 at 10:55 am
BTW- Carlos is an idiot. If you could “pay Google to pop up first,” it’d destroy google. You simply can’t buy top listings in organic searches. It doesn’t work that way.
OF COURSE if you Google “living in style” in Google video, you’ll see lots of their customers/victims. The question is who on earth googles “living in style”? Do your customers? Mine don’t.
The first result I saw when I did what Carlos said was “White Wizard toys.” The video it linked to had 13 viewings (not 30k) as of today. (I imagine about 10 of those viewings came from people doing what I just did while researching.)
Now do a Google video search for “white wizard.” I don’t see their video on the first two pages.
I suspect a few of the posters here, including Carlos, are employees of “living in style.” Which makes them actually living with sleaze.
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