Last Friday people danced to remember one legend. This Monday in the US another legend passed away - this time infomercial king Billy Mays – perhaps they will mourn in a similarly creative way. Perhaps by shouting. All day. While offering everyone they meet low, LOW prices.
Mays, a bearded man larger than the products he advertised, died yesterday, at 50, of as-yet unknown causes (though possibly related to a head injury sustained on a very bumpy plane landing the day before).
Who is Billy Mays? You may ask. Billy, let me tell you, was a pitchman. Not only that, but the finest pitchman in the world. Thank you, you might say. But what on earth is a pitchman?
You know that bloke from the Cillit Bang cleaning spray advertisements that shouted his way through 30 seconds? The one so loud and annoying he ended up putting everyone off the product for life and making them wonder who could conjure up such a ridiculous over-stereotype of a salesman? Yes, well, he wasn't conjured out of nowhere, it turns out. He was based on Billy Mays and pitchmen like him.
Tributes exploded all over the internet. On Twitter :
"OH NO! NOT BILLY MAYS! I'll never trust another pitchman like I trusted Billy. Heaven's about to get a lot cleaner. RIP."
Also a tribute blog was quickly set up. As well as dedicated pages on official sites to honour the art of the sell where some of Billy Mays's most popular infomercials can be found.
There, just flicking through a couple of the infomercials, you quite quickly notice some definitive themes in Mays's work:
1. The fact that the product will be something useful.
2. The idea that the product, though usually something for the household, will be something it is not shameful for a MAN to use. Billy is using it, and he has a beard.
3) Shouting.
Shouting about everything, be it something that chops or something that slices. Or something that sticks things together or tears them apart.
Or cooking goods like this slider thingy (you might want to adjust your volume before clicking on that link, by the way, it's one of his shoutier works). Or something for the garage, or the garden, or the toolshed - whatever it was: Billy Mays could sell it.
And so, when he died yesterday, people raised their voices and put him in the same sentence as Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett and such. "First MJ, now this?!" came the cry from all over the internet.
He may have been brash, and he may have been shouty, but he was also Very GOOD at being brash and shouty. Being brash and shouty, it turned out, sold people products they might not have thought of buying or even heard of, before a brash man with a beard started shouting at them to do so.
And the fact is, invention and entrepreneurship are key parts of the American dream. The idea of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and making a fortune by means entirely of your own hard work. And Billy and his kind - and he was the best of his kind – were one possible middle step in the process. As seen in his recent reality programme Pitchmen - following Billy and fellow sales star "Sully" Sullivan – if they choose your product to market, you can go from having a good idea and a prototype to being a millionaire in what might seem like minutes.
