Sunday, June 28, 2009
Billy Mays
The reason for TV pitchman Billy Mays' huge success eluded me when he pitched products other than the Oxy Clean line. His memorable air horn voice communicated wild enthusiasm, but there was nothing intrinsically trustworthy about his personality. I could enjoy him for a few minutes. He was a boardwalk & county fair act, directly descended from traveling miracle medicine salesmen - which is what Oxy Clean stuff is; it either works or it doesn't, & the pitch assumes we haven't met anyone who has actually bought & used the product.
The appeal of Billy Mays was easier to grasp than GemTV - jewelry porn. There, applying the identical format to each item, a transparently silly "play the game" thing with cheesy music & outrageously inflated "start price," a person sitting behind a counter sells ten hideous rings at $1000+ in two minutes, then moves on immediately to the next item & does it all over again, with the same this is the greatest deal I ever offered pitch. Tanzanites, rubies, diamonds, opals, emeralds, it doesn't matter. The "game" is only that quantities are limited & they dare you to buy it without knowing the final price. There's an entire half-hour infomercial with demonstrations devoted to selling a $60 food processor, but those rings & necklaces just fly out, & you have nothing until they're delivered, & how long does the kick last after you open the boxes? Customers are called "collectors" & ain't that the truth.
Billy Mays was no overnight success. He'd been on the road for a decade & seized his opportunity when he met the OrangeGlo guy in Pittsburgh, & that was no sure thing. He knew his job & enjoyed his fame. He may have died from something bouncing off his head during a rough plane landing yesterday.
(Google now scans new blog posts for keywords & summons up an advertisement on the post published page. Just showed me an ad for India jewelry).
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
The appeal of Billy Mays was easier to grasp than GemTV - jewelry porn. There, applying the identical format to each item, a transparently silly "play the game" thing with cheesy music & outrageously inflated "start price," a person sitting behind a counter sells ten hideous rings at $1000+ in two minutes, then moves on immediately to the next item & does it all over again, with the same this is the greatest deal I ever offered pitch. Tanzanites, rubies, diamonds, opals, emeralds, it doesn't matter. The "game" is only that quantities are limited & they dare you to buy it without knowing the final price. There's an entire half-hour infomercial with demonstrations devoted to selling a $60 food processor, but those rings & necklaces just fly out, & you have nothing until they're delivered, & how long does the kick last after you open the boxes? Customers are called "collectors" & ain't that the truth.
Billy Mays was no overnight success. He'd been on the road for a decade & seized his opportunity when he met the OrangeGlo guy in Pittsburgh, & that was no sure thing. He knew his job & enjoyed his fame. He may have died from something bouncing off his head during a rough plane landing yesterday.
(Google now scans new blog posts for keywords & summons up an advertisement on the post published page. Just showed me an ad for India jewelry).
