Insta Grip (tape-like adhesive) – A Marketing Review
It’s a big day at the architecture firm as the boss is coming to review your floor plans for an important client.
You’re proud of your project and really believe that this latest design will be a winner. To help impress the boss, you don’t want to simply lay it on your desk as you normally do. No, this time you want to hang the plans on your wall and really make a statement.
There’s a blank space on the wall across from your drafting table. It’s large enough to support your project plus whatever is needed to hang it on the wall. The printout is merely paper, so you won’t be needing any nails or heavy staples to hold it against the wall. Glue is unnecessary, and you don’t want tacks making any holes in the wall. Taping it is an option, but the tape might damage the paint, so that’s out of the question.
So how do you hang something like a large poster without damaging the wall or leaving behind any sticky residue?
Insta Grip website — www.GetInstaGrip.com
What’s this? The Insta Grip? Could it really work as advertised, or is it just another scam like many as-seen-on-TV items?
Insta Grip TV commercial
Let’s take a closer look at the Insta Grip’s TV commercial and see how it’s being advertised to us, the general public.
Insta Grip TV commercial – How not to remove wallpaper.
The Insta Grip television commercial begins with a small collection of scenes involving, well, chaos. We see everything from loose rugs tripping people to a flower vase being knocked to the floor to a hammer knocking holes in the wall (oddly, that example is NOT clarified in the Insta Hang TV commercial) to somebody damaging a wall by ripping away the wallpaper.
Whew.
Is there a way for all of that to be corrected with a single product? If not completely corrected (explained later), can the issues be somewhat or temporarily corrected?
Insta Grip TV commercial – Art and Michelle want to tell YOU all about the Insta Grip.
The answer here lies with the Insta Grip, a tacky tape-like substance you can use for a variety of reasons. Art and Michelle take the time to help introduce us to this latest tape-like product to join the as-seen-on-TV bandwagon.
Up first, Michelle shows us how to install a small decorative strip of wallpaper by using the Insta Grip product. Exactly how much of the product it required to hang that small strip of wallpaper, we don’t know. Nor do we know if the Insta Grip will last for the years that people normally wait between redecorating their rooms. What we do know is that the Insta Grip was easy to use, and if you don’t like the wallpaper and want to remove it, the Insta Grip is being advertised as not damaging the paint on the walls or leaving behind any sticky, or messy, adhesive.
After that Art shows us how to use the Insta Grip to keep a small rug in place so it’s not sliding or creating a tripping hazard. Ummm, okay. Many stores do sell rugs that are designed to NOT slide on floors (such as in bathrooms). Preventing the corners of rugs from folding over is normally preventable by watching your step around the rug in the first place. As far as not tripping over the rug, pick up your feet and watch your step. Tripping on rugs can easily be prevented by merely following some basic walking instructions that you learned back in preschool. If you have a medical condition that makes you more prone to tripping, then that’s a different story.
Insta Grip TV commercial – It’ll help keep the vase from sliding off the table.
Next we have a more unique product demonstration with the Insta Grip. The Insta Grip is being advertised as a way to help prevent glass and ceramic items from sliding off of tables and shattering when they hit hard floors. Of course, this may be less of a concern if you keep such objects in carpeted rooms. If you’re prone to having items knocked off of tables, and for some reason you still keep said items in places where they may be broken, then maybe you need more help than the Insta Grip can offer.
The practicality in this example is going to be rather small as if you’re in such a situation as this one, by now you’ve probably found a way to help protect those fragile items. It shows an alternate use for the product, but this is mainly an attention-getter. This will occur again later in the commercial with the cash demonstration.
Insta Grip TV commercial – Fancy computer animation showing no details whatsoever.
So how does the Insta Grip work?
All we really know is that A) It’s sticky but it won’t leave behind any residue, B) You can use it to hang stuff like wallpaper, and C) Ummm, it’s sticky. The TV commercial tries to explain how the Insta Grip works, but the end result is fancy computer animation that reveals very little about the product or how it sticks to walls and other items.
To help demonstrate the Insta Grip’s stick power, we see Art put the product on the bottom of a glass pitcher, press the pitcher against a small end table, and then use the glass and Insta Grip to lift the small table.
Insta Grip TV commercial – It’s so easy to move this picture depending on my mood.
Up next we see that the Insta Grip is repositionable and one item can be transferred from one surface to another. The key word here is repositionable. We NEVER see an example of the Insta Grip being REUSABLE, that is, the Insta Grip being removed from one item and used again on a second item. That doesn’t mean that the product is not reusable, it’s just that we never see this example in the TV commercial or on the product’s website.
Insta Grip TV commercial – Showing us how to hang artwork on a refrigerator.
As if this concept was still hard to grasp, up next we see Michelle display some kid’s artwork on a stainless steel refrigerator. The goal here is to hang items on a stainless steel refrigerator. Normally you use magnets to hang items on refrigerators, but stainless steel fridges are a different story. You can purchase stainless steel that is magnetic, but most people have the non-magnetic kind of metal. Anyway, we see that it’s easy to use the Insta Grip to tape some amateur artwork to the fridge. What we don’t see is if it’s easy or not to remove the same piece of Insta Grip from the back of the paper.
After this there’s a quick segment that basically shows how the Insta Grip is great for dorm rooms, with many of them having restrictions on punching holes in the walls or damaging the paint. This segment has some great selling features, but oddly enough, we only hear about it for a brief moment. Apparently the marketing team felt it would be better to waste the viewer’s time with the next selling feature, a “feature” that is deeply flawed.
Insta Grip TV commercial – I don’t want to leave a mark on the wall despite painting over it in the near future anyway.
Up next there’s a lengthy segment that deals with interior design and planning how to redecorate a room. That’s right, it’s about planning to redecorate. Art talks about holding up different color patterns so that the wife can stand back and analyze how the room would look. Michelle offers the solution of using the Insta Grip to hold the color patterns against the wall. The thing is that it really doesn’t matter since you’re going to redecorate the wall anyway.
If you’re close enough to actually repainting or putting new wallpaper on a wall, does it really matter if you use tape to hold patterns against the wall? Why is the commercial wasting so much valuable advertising time with this useless “feature”? Come on! Who gives a rat’s ass if there’s a slight mark on a wall just before it’s going to be painted? The wall is going to look brand new anyway!
Yeah, that’s really a “Designer’s Dream!” /s
Insta Grip TV commercial – Why use glue and tape when you can use a thousand little pieces of Insta Grip to help decorate your scrap book?
The Insta Grip’s advertising continues with the almost useless trend when discussing using the product for something like working with scrap books.
So let me get this right. Scrap books are meant to be permanent keepsakes of your journey through something, whether it’s for a year at school, a special event, or life as a whole. These are pages that remind you of the past and your experiences with it, whatever it was. You’re not supposed to go back through pages and redecorate them.
The pages in scrap books are heavy for a reason. They’re meant for you to glue items in there, whether they’re photos, flyers, memorabilia from events, newspaper clippings, or even decorations. If you do NOT want to glue something into a scrap book, then you get one of those binders with the clear pages such as a photo album (those books we used to store photos before the digital camera revolution changed that industry).
But according to this advertisement, we’re supposed to break from tradition and use a ton of little pieces of Insta Grip to hold all the items and decorations inside of the scrap book. Yeah, right. The TV commercial is really stretching for features when it’s talking about things like using the product to help make a scrap book.
Insta Grip TV commercial – Say good-bye to needing gloves in work and sports.
Unfortunately, the ludicrously does not end with making scrap books. The Insta Grip continues with showing how you can wrap the tape-like adhesive around tools and sports items (such as a tennis racquet) to help get a better grip. Last time I checked, apart from heavy duty and padded gloves, this was one of the specific reasons why gloves exist for work and sports. Oh, but I can just wrap all of my handles with Insta Grip and suddenly have a great grip. Sure.
On a side note, notice how the roll of Insta Grip in this example does not have the green backing to it. If I’m looking at the Insta Grip correctly, it basically functions similar to double-sided tape. Unless the company sells a roll of Insta Grip with both sides “uncovered,” then for this example somebody unwound the adhesive, removed the green backing, recoiled the Insta Grip adhesive, and then began wrapping it around the handle of the hammer. Again, that’s exactly why companies make “grip” gloves for work and sports.
Insta Grip TV commercial – I’m so important that my cell phone has to be displayed to the world.
The next example of the Insta Grip has the advertisement veering back towards the world of practicality. Here we have somebody using a small strip of the adhesive on the car’s dash so the cell phone is readily available, something of grave importance in today’s incredibly lame society. While the lameness of society is a moot point, this example is a valid selling point for the Insta Grip. Assuming you don’t hit any big bumps, it looks like the product can help you keep your cell phone in one place while you drive your car. I just stick my phone in front of the center console, but that’s just me.
After this example is perhaps the lamest example yet of the Insta Grip.
Insta Grip TV commercial – The camera guy in the back seat wants to grab the cash.
In a move that should surprise NOBODY, the marketing team felt that it would be a great sales pitch to secure five $100 bills to the hood of a jeep and drive at interstate speeds. OMG! The money stayed right there! How cool is that?!?
That’s like, totally amazing, right? Not really if you understand science and the way air works around moving vehicles.
As long as the vehicle is moving forward and the front of the bills are kept flat, then it doesn’t take much force for an adhesive to hold them in place. It would be a different story if the money was thicker than paper, but it’s not, so the Insta Grip easily holds them in place. There’s virtually no air resistance with the cash being so thin and the front end secured by the Insta Grip.
The only reason the middle two bills are waving around is because of the disturbance in the smooth air flow because of the small camera mounted to the hood of the car. If that camera was not there, then all five bills would be flat as the jeep continues driving forward.
This so-called experiment would have been a lot more entertaining if the Insta Grip was securing the back of the bills rather than the front. If this was a really strong adhesive then the trick would still work. But as we see, they only secure the front of the bills in this lamest of product demonstrations.
Insta Grip TV commercial – I’m going to be an idiot and cut a shape right in the middle, wasting all that extra adhesive around the edges.
The end of the Insta Grip TV commercial has the sales pitch. To help sweeten the deal, the Insta Grip kit also includes a couple large squares of the material that can be cut and further modified to make an ideal fit for an item. The example shows an idiot cutting right in the middle of the square whereas the smart consumer will keep the patterns as close to the edges as possible, saving more of the material for future usage.
At the very end of the advertisement is the special promotion.
The official “kit” for the Insta Grip includes one giant roll of Insta Grip, one mini roll of Insta Grip, and two sheets of Insta Grip for you to cut as pleased. The special promotion includes a second kit for free. All you have to do is pay extra shipping and handling fees.
Insta Grip website — www.GetInstaGrip.com
The TOTAL COST of the Insta Grip promotion comes to $25.90 ($10.00 + $7.95 S&H + $7.95 S&H (for the “free” kit)). In a shocking display, this total cost is actually displayed on the “ORDER NOW” page on the website.
This is the second time that I’ve recently seen as-seen-on-TV websites clearly listing the total cost BEFORE people click on the submit button to place their order. A similar event occurred with the Aqua Rug website. I wonder if there was legal backlash and the companies have to now display such information clearly. Them not doing so has been a major complaint amongst consumers.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The Insta Grip presents itself as being yet another sticky adhesive that allegedly will not leave marks or residue on your walls or however you’re using the product. Been there, done that. It’s hard to get excited for a product when you see a new company sprouting a new version of it like every other year.
Most of the product demonstrations in the Insta Grip advertisement were laughable and ridiculous, such as using the product to hold wallpaper, wrapping it around a tennis racquet’s handle, or holding down cash on a moving vehicle. While the demonstration with money was created to make the commercial memorable, most of the other demos were just plain useless.
This is taken a step further when you read the website’s FAQ page and the other examples it lists for the adhesive there.
Insta Grip FAQ page — www.GetInstaGrip.com
We already discussed the issue with using something like Insta Grip with scrap books, but the FAQ takes the scenarios further with applications such as carpet installation, repairing clothing, and holding a mattress and drop cloth in place of all things. I spent several months during college as a painter, and having drop cloths suddenly flying away was never a problem. If there was ever a hint of them moving out of place, then the cloths were secured with paint cans. As far as mattresses moving, if you’re so restless in your sleep (or other bedroom activities) that your mattress continues moving out of place, then it sounds like you’re going to need a better solution rather than some adhesive.
The clothing repair sounds sceptical since, if it works as advertised, then it would be a great selling feature that could benefit a lot of people. But we only see the briefest of scenes showing clothing repair in the commercial, and the website barely makes mention of it.
IF the Insta Grip really does work well with clothes, then the advertisers need to make that a dominant selling feature of the product. There are lots of clothing accessories out there that have similar results. Advertise the hell out of the product and proudly stand behind the claims of what it can do in the fashion world.
As far as the Insta Grip, it seems like there’s plenty of room for improvement with both the television commercial and the product’s website. The website is clearly lacking additional material and more sales information. Parts of the website are also in need of some grammar work.
“Its repositionable, reusable, use on glass & mirrors, candles & collectibles, fix hems & clothing emergencies, scrapbooking, fabric & swatches, use on carpets & rugs, use on solid walls and dorm rooms.”
Ummm, do you guys want to run that massive sentence by your third grade teacher again?
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All of the Insta Grip commercial images were screenshots of a TV commercial currently available on YouTube and the product’s website. For more product information, please visit the company’s website at www.GetInstaGrip.com.
Insta Grip is a registered trademark.
RellimZone.com is not affiliated with Insta Grip.