PRNewswire

FAIRFIELD, N.J., Oct. 30, 2008 — AJ Khubani, successful entrepreneur and “The King of the Infomercial,” was highly critical of Barack Obama’s 30-minute broadcast Wednesday evening, calling it a “missed opportunity” that offered “no real solutions” and was “full of fluff.”

“Barack Obama: American Stories” was broadcast in primetime on CBS, Fox, NBC, BET, Univision, TVOne and MSNBC. Khubani said in reaction to reports that Obama paid about $3 million to produce the spot: “He grossly overpaid.”

Khubani, founder of TeleBrands, says he knows exactly what a successful infomercial should include. His “As Seen on TV” company has sold billions of dollars worth of products in the past 25 years.

“Overall, I thought it was mediocre at best and just a missed opportunity for Obama to connect with voters prior to the election,” Khubani said. “He spent a lot of time presenting the problems and very little time on solutions.”

There must also be endorsements of the product in any successful infomercial, Khubani said. The Obama campaign calls them “validators,” and the broadcast featured not only Senators and Governors, but also Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, for example, to encourage voters to support Obama.

“I thought he could have done much better with the endorsements,” he said. “Where were the ‘A-listers’ he always talks about, like Colin Powell and Warren Buffett?”

Finally, infomercials must also have a call to action and that call to action is usually repeated at least three times, Khubani said. The obvious call to action is to vote for Obama on Election Day, Khubani said.

“I have to give him some credit here,” Khubani said. “Almost the entire live portion was one continuous call to action: knock on doors, call your neighbors, go to my website and cast your ballot.”