Ginsu is a brand of direct marketed knives. The brand is owned by the Douglas Quikut Division of Scott Fetzer, a Berkshire Hathaway Company. The brand was heavily promoted in the late 1970s and 1980s on U.S. television using infomercials characterized by hawker and hard sell pitch techniques. The commercials generated sales of between two and three million Ginsu sets between 1978 and 1984.
The Wisdom of Ginsu, a book co-authored by Ed Valenti and Barry Becher
"Great Scott! A knife that cuts trees." A 1968 Cinécraft spot showed how Quikut knives always stayed sharp and could cut a tomato and then a tree.
Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature.
A pile of advertising mail
18th century English entrepreneur and potter Josiah Wedgwood developed modern marketing techniques and was an early advocate of direct mail.
Cover of Eatons Catalogue, Ontario, Canada, 1884