MICHAEL JACKSON was not the only famous 50-year-old to meet an untimely death in the past few days. On June 28th it was reported that Billy Mays, America’s “infomercial king”, had gone to meet the Great Pitch Man in the Sky. “Hi, Billy Mays here” was his booming catchphrase, which certainly got straight to the point in a way typical of his no-nonsense approach to selling. His death was mourned by many Americans, including plenty who would never admit to having spent a minute of their time watching an infomercial, the medium he made his own.
OxiClean, a “huge value” detergent; ZorbEEZ, a “super absorbent” cleaning-cloth; Kaboom, an unstoppable cleaning fluid (“Kaboom! And the soap scum is gone!”); Orange Glo, which “cleans, polishes and protects, all at the same time”; and Mighty Putty, sticky stuff that is “going to solve all your problems”. These were among a long list of products introduced to consumers by Mr Mays, who with his sometime partner, Anthony Sullivan, was said to have generated over $1 billion in sales.
Cleaning up Mr Mays was best known as a practitioner of infomercials lasting a couple of minutes, which may account for his fame. The longer variety can drag on for half an hour or more, whereas the quick-fire messages and demonstrations delivered by Mr Mays were sufficiently energetic and entertaining to inspire scores of affectionate parodies and dubbed-over versions on YouTube (check out, for instance, the “Billy Mays Gangsta Remix”).
Mr Mays learnt his art on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, demonstrating gadgets “As Seen On TV”. He gave bottles of OxiClean to the 300 guests at his wedding, and later went through his “Powered by the air we breathe!” routine from the OxiClean ad on the dance floor. More recently, he appeared with Mr Sullivan in a reality-television show, “Pitchmen”.
Many people regard advertising as one of the worst aspects of capitalism, and the in-your-face style of infomercials as the worst aspect of advertising—selling weak people goods they don’t need. Yet to their fans, infomercials are an example of capitalism at its best, because of the way they single-mindedly promote new products to the likeliest “early adopters”. To do so, they have become increasingly sophisticated. Marian Salzman, a trend-spotting guru at Porter Novelli, a public-relations firm, says that “infomercials have become pop culture and a shopping substitute, edutainment even,” and that Mr Mays “will be remembered as the Dean of Salesmanship.”
Sadly, Mr Mays has signed off at a time of great possibilities for infomercials. An industry said to have revenues of $30 billion a year and a growth rate of 7%, infomercials are proving surprisingly resilient in the face of the recession. Indeed, the collapse of mainstream advertising has made it cheaper for infomercial-makers to buy time on television and other media. Mainstream firms such as Avon, a cosmetics company, are embracing infomercials for the first time. In May the firm ran one designed to recruit saleswomen.
Amar Bhidé of Columbia University Business School and the author of “The Venturesome Economy”, which explains why America’s economy has prospered, says there are a number of advantages over other forms of advertising that, despite their relatively low rate of sales conversion, make infomercials “a particularly efficient channel”. Their direct-selling method means low labour costs and limited inventory (no need to stock the shelves of thousands of retail outlets across the country). Also, there is often risk sharing between the vendor and the television channel that screens the infomercial.
On June 29th the British government announced the launch of a £150m ($225m) venture fund to promote investment in small, innovative technology firms. Given governments’ poor record in picking future business winners, this may prove to be money wasted. If politicians want a surer way to increase innovation they might do better to invest in training people who, like Mr Mays, can persuade cautious consumers to take a chance on new products, thereby helping to build the initial demand needed to launch them. Want to know how? Simple. Governments of the world: call right now!
It's rather like when I was running. The older I get, the slower I get 
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It implies that plants are capable of more sophisticated behaviour than we imagined 
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