Raising the Tube Stakes

Pity the purists. They punched Top Gun into the VCR and couched back to watch the world's best-trained combat pilots fly the world's best interceptor aircraft. Then, out of the blue, as it were, came a commercial for Diet Pepsi. Tsk. Those caught off guard just hadn't been watching their market-place radar. Paramount and Pepsi had ballyhooed the cassette of Top Gun, 1986's box-office champ, in ads and promotions on an unprecedented scale--about $8,000,000 worth of publicity.

The jump in tube stakes should surprise no one. Where viewers go, advertisers follow--and cable and VCRs have plundered a hefty audience from network television. Creeping sponsorship began with the video version of Eat to Win, by Robert Haas, the sports nutritionist who taught Martina Navratilova how to have opponents for breakfast. To defray costs, the producers, Karl-Lorimar Home Video, pulled off a tie-in scheme with the Red Lobster restaurant chain whereby Red Lobster coughed up some bucks because Haas, on tape, recommended what Red Lobster serves: seafood.

Since then, other how-to tapes have slipped in not-so-sly endorsements to help foot costs and bump profits. When racing champion Jackie Stewart made a video on safe driving, Ford cheerfully provided the cars. Sexpot golfer Jan Stephenson's How to Golf tape features clubs and balls from Dunlop. The video of The Mr. Boston Official Video Bartender's Guide not only tells tyros how to mix civilized drinks but shows how it's done by professionals at noted saloons from Boston to Hawaii.

But plugs were just the warm-up. Indeed, the logical next step is already here: taped catalogs, or "videologs," that sell via VCR. Who, after all, wants a dull two-dimensional lingerie mailer when you can actually watch Dress to Thrill ($9.90), a 17-minute tape of silk bustiers and lacy G strings sold by Fashion Video of Garland, Texas? Sizes, prices and other details accompany every garment displayed; just dial the 24-hour toll-free number. Or sample the more blatantly erotic Mellow Mail lingerie videolog, which aims at prurience rather than purchases (thus the price: $22.95). It stars four knockouts posing in scanties while a director yells instructions and encouragement ("Ver-ee pow-fool pose, ver-ee sex-ee!"). At the end of the tape, each outfit--Tigress Ecstasy, Jungle Teddy--is reprised with a 24-hour phone number.

Nonintimate items are available from outfits such as Brooklyn's Videologue, with its broad product range of health/fitness items, toys, gifts and electronics. Videologue's Marty Alter says demonstrability is critical in selecting products. "We have an alarm clock that wakes you by stamping its feet--you can't show that in print. People see a rowing machine and think all you can do with it is row. The video shows the other exercises you can do."

Tapes are even selling houses. Schlott Realtors of New Jersey has a Special Properties video of houses listed at $750,000 and up (way up--to $2,500,000). "The video costs $14.95," says V.P. Bob Natiello, "to discourage decorators scrounging ideas and voyeurs of the rich but not famous."

If he wants a vacation instead of a house, there's Fodor's Travel Guides on tape ($29.95 each, sponsored by VISA). Or consider Air France's loaner cassettes, which cover its tour packages in detail. "We take you right into the hotel rooms," says advertising manager John Bowling, "even into the bathrooms. Some of our tours are budget packages, and Americans tend to be squeamish about less expensive hotels."

There's even a video magazine on video tape: OverView, published by ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith, which has been tested in five cities and could go national this summer. It's a monthly 90-minute tapezine (vidzine? magvid?) on movies and music videos that includes commercials for CBS/Fox videos, Dentyne and the secretary's pal, Liquid Paper (invented, as it happens, by Nesmith's mom).

What it all means is that sponsors get cheap ads and distributors get higher sales and lower costs. What do viewers get? A break. So far, most sponsorship is subtle, with few blatant pitches--and the ads or plugs bring down prices. Sponsored aerobics videos and how-to tapes, for instance, are cheaper to buy, and movie prices could fall, too. Currently, only Paramount Home Video prices major movies to sell ($29.95) rather than rent, and Diet Pepsi's ad cut Top Gun's price by three dollars, to $26.95. Commercials could force other distributors to abandon the $80--$100 range. Savings-conscious VCR owners may even begin to demand commercials, especially if they're as easy to swallow as the 60-second spot in Top Gun, about a hot-shot jet jock who packs Diet Pepsi on every flight.

Figure it this way: A one-minute commercial worth three dollars means savings at the rate of $180 an hour. A lot of VCR owners may say, "I'll buy that."