If you watch Fox News, and we know many of you do, you’ve seen commercials for My Pillow. But did you know that Fox News is partly responsible for turning around a sales slump at the Minnesota manufacturer of foam pillows?
Bloomberg has the fascinating story of Mike Lindell the creator of and pitchman for My Pillow who is a Donald Trump-supporting former crack addict who dreamt, quick literally, of creating a comfortable pillow that is now a multi-million dollar business.
On a day in November 2014, right before the midterm elections, Lindell was shivering on a tree stand while deer hunting. He was a little down—he’d just gone through a second divorce, and, because he’d taken his eye off the ball, the company was in a sales slump. Suddenly, the phone app that provides real-time sales graphs spiked. He phoned his call center to see what happened. It was a short ad that had just begun to air on Fox News.
AdvertisementHe shot a deer, then ran to his car and called his media buyer to ask how much Fox he could buy through the end of the year. The answer was $2.1 million. Buy it all, Lindell said. The ads coincided perfectly with the Republican takeover of Congress, branded as a retaking of America. And here was Mike Lindell, a humble American success story, making pillows in American factories. By 2015, MyPillow was growing faster than ever.
Because the commercials still run in regular rotation on Fox, My Pillow will occasionally, inadvertently appear during Fox News programming.
In a segment on Fox & Friends late last year, pollster Larry Sabato was on to talk about how pundits and pollsters got the 2016 election wrong. “Look, if it doesn’t work out, I’m just going to go and sell pillows with the My Pillow guy. Everybody thinks I look like him anyway. I’m going to join forces. I’ll probably have a happier life.”
More restful, anyway.