Qa With Pitchman Billy Mays

L.G.: Do you write your own copy?

B.M.: Pretty much. I'll tweak it, I'll buy a vowel. So yesterday, we did five 15-second commercials for OxiClean at Blue Moon Studios in New Jersey, and started off with Pat Benatar saying, "Hit me with your best shot," then I come in, "Billy Mays here! OxiClean has four-in-one power to tackle your toughest stains, the toughest laundry stains there are. So why not hit me with your best shot?" So we're really looking forward to that one.

L.G.: How many commercials for which products do you have in rotation right now? Is it too much of a memory trick to get you to list them?

B.M.: No, not at all. OxiClean foremost, Kaboom, Orange Glo wood-floor polish, the Mighty Putty, Mighty Mend-It, another line extension of that, it's more of the glue, which you'll be seeing a lot here in the next couple weeks. HandySwitch, Simoniz Fix It, which is a scratch remover, Zorbeez, which is the shimmies. Hercules Hook, which is kind of off the air, but we bring it on if there's time available just to drive the retail a little bit, where they split the revenues with us. Now Steam Buddy is a big one, the steam iron, which is very big for us. And then there's the Samurai Shark knife sharpener.

L.G.: So all those kinds of products are in the $19.95 range or less and your high-end product is ICanBenefit.com. Since we're in the middle of a presidential campaign, I have to ask, would it be possible to use you as a pitchman for a presidential campaign?

B.M.: Well, Chuck Norris does.

L.G.: Right, he did for Mike Huckabee, but that was more sort of a humorous thing, I suppose. A lot of the fundraising is done on the internet, in small increments—indeed, in many cases in $19.95 increments. Could you see a situation where you're selling Barack Obama or John McCain in that way, or is that just too nutty?

B.M.: I think if I was approached by the McCain camp. I'm a Republican.

L.G.: Maybe this is unfair to ask, but how would you pitch John McCain? Would you say, "Billy Mays here for John McCain?"  

B.M.: Security. The world's a safer place. Country first. "Billy Mays for John McCain! If you want to keep you and your family safe, vote McCain!" I'd have to think about it, I wouldn't like to bash anything. I'd like to keep things positive.

L.G.: Of course in the case of a political candidate, you wouldn't have to worry about legal and vetting and whether or not what you said was true.

B.M.: Yeah, you're right. You know, the campaign is going to get really dirty here soon. Not that it already isn't, but it's going to get dirtier.

L.G.: What would be the solution to that? Would that be OxiClean?

B.M.: Yeah, we're going to clean up both these candidates' acts.

L.G.: Put them in a bucket full of activated water and OxiClean?

B.M.: That's right, the world's a much cleaner place because of it. You know, one thing I like to say, I owe it to the pitchmen from Atlantic City who taught me and kind of vetted me. They didn't have to do that. These guys saw something in me and I hung in there in Atlantic City, and they gave me little snippets here and there to apply, and I hung in there, hung in there, and they kind of just passed the baton to me and said, "Look, kid, take this to the next level." I'm a pitchman, my business comes from the pitch, nothing else. My voice, my likeness, is my livelihood. That's it. I keep it simple. I pick good products. The reality show coming up on Discovery is going to take us to another level.

L.G.: Let me ask you a question before we talk about that. What is the Billy Mays brand? What are you selling?

B.M.: Trust. And I'll stop the channel surfers, get a lot of people saying, "He annoys me," he does this and that—but some of those people are the first to buy. And people have bought so many different products off me that they trust I'm going to give them a quality product. My style is my style. I may offend a few people, my over-the-top-ness sometimes, but if it's not broken don't fix it. They look at me as the average Joe. I'm going to sit down, talk with them, have a beer, nothing real special. I'm myself and I have a good time living life. I have a 3-year-old and a 22-year-old.

L.G.: Does your wife like your beard?

B.M.: Oh yeah.

L.G.: Because you can never shave it, can you?

B.M.: No.

L.G.: You're 50 years old. Do you have to make sure you don't go gray?

B.M.: Yeah, I touch it up here and there. My beard is part of that image, and I think that people wouldn't recognize me without a beard. Sometimes they don't recognize me, they think they know who I am, but—"I know you, I just know you."