Remembering Billy Mays, 60-second Storyteller
The other day we posted an entry about how tricky it is to convey sophisticated ideas in a simple way (and the approach we have taken on some Cisco Eos Flash experiences along these lines).Nobody was better at explaining things quickly than TV pitchman Billy Mays, who, sadly, was found dead today at his Florida home.
Though Mays worked in a completely different world from high technology, his little commercial gems showed how a sometimes complicated story could be boiled down to setting up a premise, giving a little technical background, and demonstrating how the product works. I often use examples of his work when describing to people how to get across a point quickly online.
Don't expect to see infomercials anything like these on Cisco.com (and I promise we will never yell like Billy), but we have been thinking a lot about how to make our online demos and Flash experiences more straightforward (like that Cisco Eos example mentioned above). There are elements of that Bill Mays spirit that we will hope inspires us to be succinct storytellers.
Here are a couple of my favorite Billy Mays ads: Some spoofs he did for ESPN that show off the master's style of demonstration and storytelling:
(The first one even explains how the Internet works. Well, sort of.)
Reference: Article: TV Pitchman Found Dead
Posted by Martin Hardee at 10:35AM PST
Dianne_D Jul 1, 2009
A lot of people are eager to know the reasons behind the death of Billy Mays. According to preliminary reports, what Billy Mays cause of death was heart disease, specifically hypertensive heart disease. Hypertension, or high blood pressure, appears to have been the cause and it appears that any minor head trauma he might have suffered as a result of the plane incident he was involved with had nothing to do with it. He had just returned from shooting an OxyClean commercial, the product which got many to shell out fast cash and catapulted the pitchman to national attention. Many got payday loans for his products, and would like to know what the Billy Mays cause of death was for sure.