The Low Pitch

From carnivals, boardwalks, county fairs and street corners across the U.S. the glib salesmen known as "pitchmen" were rushing into television. In the New York area alone, TV pitchmen expect to reap a $10 million harvest this year. This week Manhattan Adman Harold Kaye will have nearly 20 of his pitchmen doing more than 130 hours of solid selling on TV, hawking such merchandise as $1 card tricks, electric irons, luminous Christmas tree ornaments, infrared-ray broilers, talking dolls, $39.95 wristwatches (on "easy, generous terms").

Make It Look Easy. Pitchmen, happily tracing their ancestry back to the ancient Phoenician traders who once unloaded junk jewelry on Greek housewives, have not changed much in the past few thousand years. But in recent years they have moved indoors; first as department store demonstrators and then as radio salesmen. TV, however, is a pitchman's paradise: he reaches a large audience and is visible as well as vocal. "The pitchman's spiel is not as important as his hands," says 36-year-old Harold Kaye. "He sells in proportion to how skillful he is at manipulating the worker (see glossary). Whether it's a potato peeler or a card trick--he has to make it look easy."

The oldtime pitchman employs the "high pitch" and is usually "a screamer, a semi-comedian and comparatively illiterate," says Kaye. On television, the "low pitch" is preferred: "Our people tend to be on the quiet side; they're subtle, more confidential, and much more personal." In evidence, Kaye points to his top TV pitchman, William "Hoppy" Haupt, a college graduate (Loyola of Los Angeles) and a former teacher at Los Angeles' Immaculate Heart College Labor School. Says Kaye admiringly: "Hoppy does everything except gadgets. He's extraordinary at selling finer quality merchandise."

Call It Education. Pitchmen are somewhat cramped by TV station rules limiting the amount of time that can be given to commercials.* Adman Kaye solves this problem by buying time in 1 1/2-hour chunks, scheduling a movie and then breaking it up for repeated four-minute pitches. To the battered televiewer, the breaks in the movie seem all but unendurable, the TV pitches all but interminable. But Kaye is careful to explain that demonstrating how something works comes under the heading of education, not selling. "It's only when we get into our turn (see glossary) that we're using commercial time," he says.

Kaye has noted approvingly that more & more big network shows are using pitchmen's techniques: "Whenever a performer demonstrates an article and sells it, he's a pitchman. Arthur Godfrey is one of the greatest; he has many of the pitch techniques." But Kaye looks with tolerant amusement on Sid Stone, an apostle of the high pitch whose rapid-fire commercial spiels for Texaco are an adornment of the Milton Berle show. "Stone's not a pitchman," Kaye says condescendingly, "he's just an entertainer."

*The amount of time allowed for commercials varies from station to station. Usually it runs about one minute of selling to five minutes of entertainment.

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