Over at Clayton Makepeace’s blog, there is a special guest post from marketing maven Rich Schefren.

It’s all about TV pitchman Billy Mays and the marketing lessons to be learned from his work.

In a nutshell…

“…Billy knew how to do something that very few marketers realize is even possible. He knew how to create and stir up demand for a product in less than two minutes.”

“That’s right, in less than 120 seconds he was bale to introduce you to a product, get you to want it badly enough, and then get you to pick up the phone and crack open your wallet to order it. And once again – all in the span of two minutes.”

Now, for marketers and copywriters, this is going to be an increasingly important skill.

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Here’s something a little different from the usual marketing video clips that we’ve been looking at.

It’s from one of my favourite authors, Steven Pressfield.

His best known book is probably “Gates Of Fire”, a retelling of the epic battle between the Greeks (mainly Spartans) and the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

Steven’s latest book is “Killing Rommel” a novel set against the back drop of the war in North Africa in 1942-43.

Now, if you like historical drama I think you’ll love this book.  I got it a few weeks ago and couldn’t put it down.  Wonderful book with a surprising twist at the end.  Can’t rate it too highly.

But that’s not the main point of this post.

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…from Billy Mays.

After yesterday’s post, I couldn’t resist putting up one of Billy’s “Mighty Putty” infomercials.

Love the part with the truck! Who wouldn’t want some of this stuff!

My only slight quibble with this is that the offer is a little ordinary…great value for sure, but ordinary.