After dealing with Milwaukee, I e-mailed Willie Aames's manager as Derek Wayne, Star Talent licensing representative for Milwaukee Power Tools:

From: Derek Wayne
To: Willie Aames's manager
Subject: endorsement opportunity for Willie Aames

My name is Derek Wayne, and I am a licensing representative at Star Talent for Milwaukee, the power tool manufacturer.

We are currently trying to broaden our appeal to the heartland demographic even more, particularly our core Christian customer base. In doing so, we need a spokesman who epitomizes the rugged power and inspirational faith we believe our power tools represent. A "Charles in Charge" rerun was playing in the office the other day, and someone mentioned that Willie Aames would be a great choice, given his success as a Christian icon with the "Bible Man" series.

In particular, we are looking for someone to endorse our line of power-sanders. Our surveys show that these are especially popular with our Christian customers, and they would be most susceptible to an Aames-led campaign. We would be happy to arrange tie-ins with "Bible Man" as well, should Mr. Aames be amenable--perhaps an episode about proper safety and conduct with power-sanders?

Right now we are just trying to gauge Mr. Aames's level of interest; later we can discuss specific strategies and ad channels (print, radio, television, public appearances).

Please respond at your convenience if you are interested in this exciting opportunity.

Sincerely,

Derek Wayne

The manager passed along the e-mail to Willie, who responded directly. Although I later saw on his IMDb profile that Willie is a woodworking enthusiast, I honestly had no idea prior to this:

From: Willie Aames
To: Derek Wayne

Mr. Wayne,

I received your email from my manager. I have to say I am interested. I am an avid wood worker and have been building my own furniture for years with quite an extensive shop in my home.

In connection with the Christian marketplace, I have been extremely active having done 120 personal church appearances per year, for the last 10 years, and showing an annual attendance of 300,000 to 400,000 kids and parents.

Currently my wife and I are writing a book that releases nation wide in the spring. Our deal is through Broadman and Holdman, one of the oldest publishers in America and owner of some 200+ Christian bookstores. [Redacted studio] and [redacted actor, rhymes with Chelsea Bammer] are both actively seeking the feature film rights.

The book release coincides with the premier of my new Outdoor program on The Outdoor Channel, beginning April 3, 2007 every Tuesday night at 7:30 PM, which is possibly the number one time slot available. Needless to say there seems to be quite a bit of synergy that could be directly and organically attached to the Milwaukee brand.

I Iook forward to speaking with you!

Cordially,
Willie Aames

First Willie and I discussed his upcoming projects, including his hunting show premiering on The Outdoor Channel next year. Willie is an accomplished bow-hunter of bears, moose, and caribou, and recently bagged a world-record caribou (as measured in inches of antler):

WILLIE: We hunt grizzly bear and all that stuff.
DEREK: What kind of firepower do you use for something like that, to take down a caribou?
WILLIE: Our bow.
DEREK: Just a bow. Just bow-hunting?
WILLIE: Bow and arrow.
DEREK: Bow and arrow. Wow.
WILLIE: With the moose, you've got a 2,800-pound, prehistoric, nine-foot giant that walks up to you. And his antlers are six feet across. And if he gores you ... you know, we do it with no gun back up, nothing. So if these animals want you....

As you'll see later, Willie likes to use the adjective "prehistoric." Soon I detailed my endorsement proposal as a licensing representative for Star Talent, East Coast, in conjunction with Milwaukee Power Tools:

DEREK: Yeah, so let me tell you what's going on.... I'm not affiliated with Milwaukee, I'm associated with Star Talent—we handle the account. They're getting a bunch of personalities. And I guess someone must have known that you do this outdoor stuff. They must have known somehow that you're a woodworker. Have you discussed your woodworking in interviews before?
WILLIE: Never. Never. I do a lot of inlay work. I mean, I've got 800 hours of hand-sanding into our harvest table. Two-and-a-half-inch black walnut.
DEREK: Well, this is serendipity, because somehow ... they knew about this outdoor thing, I don't know, and someone suggested you. We're trying to get different personalities from TV, from film, from so on, to do ... different tools. And ... the real reason is we know about your Christian faith, your show. [A reference to Willie's 2004 live-action television series, Bible Man.] And there's a lot, you obviously know, there's a huge market for power tools in the heartland.
WILLIE: Giant.
DEREK: It's just massive. Compared to anywhere else, it's like 90 percent of the market at times, depending on what you're doing.
WILLIE: The flyover country can produce.
DEREK: They produce. That's where the bucks are. People just don't think about it. Specifically, sanding, they've found—and a couple of other tools, but things that are associated with woodworking—'cause the Christ connection really plays to our religious demographic. And you're obviously—like you said, you do the church appearances, you do the Bible Guy show. You do it all.
WILLIE: And then we've got this book deal that's coming out....

I attempted to bond with Willie over my own drug-addled past:

DEREK: What interested the Milwaukee people is your story—coming back from drugs and finding Christ, it really resonates with people. I've got to say, it's not the same level as yours, but I had my own problems. I was—it's kind of an odd thing—hooked on Benadryl for three or four years.
WILLIE: Oh wow.
DEREK: It's weird. You wouldn't think it's addictive, but it gets you. It gets you hard.
WILLIE: I'd imagine it's kind of a downer.
DEREK: It's a downer. It's for insomnia. It helps you fall asleep. You get addicted. And then soon I was sleeping 20-, 21-hours a day.
WILLIE: Oh my God.
DEREK: Waking up to eat, piss, and shit and maybe shower. Not even shower a lot of times. You can imagine what I smelled like after a few days.
WILLIE: Yeah.
DEREK: But, you know, it's over the counter. It's cheap. It's something that you can really get easy and no one's gonna bother you, no one's gonna hassle you with it. And my faith isn't as strong as yours. Religion helped me a bit—it's more spirituality for me. But it helped me out. It took a long time. It took a lot of prayer and a lot of reflection, but I kicked the Benedryl. And I've been clean about three, three-and-a-half years now
WILLIE: Well, good for you. Good for you.
DEREK: Thanks, man.

Then we got into specific marketing ideas Star Talent had for the Milwaukee power sander and the defunct "Bible Man" character:

DEREK: What about reviving the Bible Guy character for a short clip just for Milwaukee. Something like a 5-minute short showing you fending off ... the heathens or the Muslims. Something—we want to show the power of the power-sander. And that it's safe, too. We were thinking half of it would be a safety instruction thing about how safe it is, and then half would be the power, the violence of the thing. Again, fending off the non-believers kind of thing. Is that something that—
WILLIE: I'm kind of curious as to.... Sanding of the nonbeliever, is that what you were saying?
DEREK: Something like that. I've not seen the show, but I imagine you'd fight evildoers, non-Christians. Is it something like that?
WILLIE: I mean, there were evildoers, but it was really sort of based on mankind's flaws. Like, for instance, we had a show called Conquering the Wrath of Rage, where this guy used to throw this magical fury dust on you and people would get angry, oddly enough, and act out of character. And the idea of that was, in scripture, nothing says you can't be angry as a Christian. The question is, "What do you do with it?"
DEREK: We were hoping you could sand people with it.... You know, turn the sander on.
WILLIE: Right.
DEREK: So you're saying, if you could resurrect the Bible Guy character, there's nothing in the Bible that says you can't use a sander or a tool as an implement of defense. Or, if someone hits you, use that power back with them and defeat them with the sander or something like that.
WILLIE: No, no. There are no rules as to what implements you can use as a line of defense or something of that nature. Really, unless you're talking Old Testament, there's not a lot that even addresses—
DEREK: Power sanders.
WILLIE: Well, it certainly doesn't address power-sanders. But it doesn't really address anger or defense unless it's a spiritual defense against something, and that's to be constantly alert. So there's nothing that says you can or you can't.
DEREK: So we could do something like the Bible Guy character fending off heathens and Muslims—if they're attacking him first, if they're making him angry—with the Milwaukee power sander.
WILLIE: Well, I've gotta be honest with you. I have a hard time believing that any national company is gonna allow somebody to do something where you're sanding off the heathens and the Muslims.
DEREK: No, you don't have to actually kill them. You would do it as a shield and they don't even come close to you, basically. Do you see what I'm getting at?
WILLIE: Uh-huh.
DEREK: You're not actually creating violence. They're attacking you. We're thinking of it as a sort of allegory for 9/11. We don't come back and invade them, we're just sort of defending ourselves. And you have the sander up as a sort of shield and they stay away. It's sort of an invisible force field, but it's visible, and it's a sander.
WILLIE: Well, yeah, you could do it. Not really knowing what you have in mind, visually, what I would do if I were doing Bible Man and I had a sander, I would take it and use it in conjunction with a lot of 3-D effects so that if you were to spin that thing up, then it actually turns into a force field kind of thing.
DEREK: Oh, that'd be cool. Does that actually work on sanders in some way, or is that something you do with effects, you're saying?
WILLIE: No, I'd just do the effect. Just have it spin up, and it creates a shield and then whenever the bad guys throw some sort of—
DEREK: Like a rock, or whatever.
WILLIE: Well, not even a rock. Usually they become Star Wars-like effects. They have, like, a little laser or some sort of little bomb. And you spin the thing up and it creates a shield that you can protect people with.
DEREK: So the sander can be used as a shield against the rocks that they chuck at you.
WILLIE: [Pause] Right.
DEREK: Or the lasers, too. That's good, I'll have to look into that.
WILLIE: Right, so you can spin the laser off of it and make it ricochet. Usually, the demise of any of the characters in Bible Man, we're very careful to make sure that it's not any of the Bible characters of the Bible Man Team hurting somebody else. It's usually whatever they throw at us, they deflect, and they do themselves in.
DEREK: So you can have, like, a Muslim shooting a laser at you, you deflect it, it gets him back. Therefore, it's almost like you didn't do it, but the sander did it.
WILLIE: Yeah, you can do that....
DEREK: Well, that sounds good.

Having established that the Bible would sanction a commercial for the Milwaukee power sander featuring heathen laser beams deflecting off the spinning, force-field effect of the sander and killing Muslims, in an allegorical homage to 9/11, we moved on to product placement for the power sander on Willie's outdoors show:

DEREK: So, you're saying on the outdoor show, the sander could not cut antlers, but you could do the trophy base?
WILLIE: Well, yeah, you wouldn't want to cut antlers with it anyway. I'm just talking very realistically. If you wanted to talk about it as a metaphor—
DEREK: Yeah, that's what ... it is a metaphor.
WILLIE: Where, like, this thing is so powerful and rugged.... If I had a grizzly coming straight at me, you could kind of put up the sander, and he sees the sander and he goes, "Oh, that's too strong for me," and he splits, basically.
DEREK: (Laughs) Yeah.... If the bear came up close enough, could the sander actually defeat the bear, or would that not work?
WILLIE: No, if the bear wants to eat you, he's gonna eat you.
DEREK: But what if you put the sander up in his face. I mean, the sander is pretty powerful, too.
WILLIE: I mean, they're tough. Literally, Derek, if I miss and make a mistake, I'm a dead man.
DEREK: ...How about if you have a dead bear? Can you sand through the bear or is that not gonna work—is it too rugged for that?
WILLIE: Uh....
DEREK: We're looking for those, as you said, visual metaphors ... we're looking for an infomercial kind of visual, just showing the sander at work, and incorporating it with your outdoor show is just a serendipitous boon—we'd have shots in the outdoors show slicing through caribou antlers, slicing through a grizzly bear corpse. And showing the guts slash and the bone marrow fly and seeing the sander.... If you think about the old-time infomercials, they show things cutting through stuff you wouldn't ordinarily cut through. They show scissors cutting through steel. We want to show the sander's ... rugged outdoor quality. We want to show it cutting through nature, basically. Cutting through things you don't ordinarily use a sander for.... They're not known as cutting implements per se, but if you show how powerful it is, we think that can boost sales, just that alone.... I'm not a woodworker myself. I don't know how these things work exactly. But these were just some ideas we were kicking around the other day.
WILLIE: Yeah, I can't think of anything on an animal that you would really, if you'd taken this animal, that you'd want to grind down or grind through, unless it's a stand for a trophy. Now, the only thing that you could do, is there are a lot of guys that will take antlers and make knife handles out of it or make jewelry out of it and that sort of stuff. But that's not certainly something I think that somebody would do with a world-record caribou antler.
DEREK: You don't need to use the world-record one, but just a regular average-size caribou. But, you know, if you make a necklace or something out of it.
WILLIE: I mean, unless you really want to do that metaphor of, you hold up the sander, and it's tougher than a grizzly bear—
DEREK: ...You actually just said our tagline: "Milwaukee Sander: Tougher than a Grizzly."
WILLIE: Yeah, you know, "So Tough, It's Almost Prehistoric." [Second instance of "prehistoric."] Those moose, I get within four or five feet of them. And, if they want to, they'll pick a grown man up and throw him forty, fifty feet.
DEREK: Would the sander be loud enough and, just, intimidating enough that the moose would run away?
WILLIE: ...Actually, if you got the moose up close enough, they don't know what people are, really, because it's so remote. But if you had him come in close and you lifted up a cordless and squeezed it off and it made some noise, they'd run. For sure they'd run.
DEREK: A visual of you scaring off this fucking moose with a sander way up in the woods would be just an awesome, ultimate wave.
WILLIE: ...I mean, those moose are huge. You know, they're twice the size of a horse. So when you see these things, they're just big, giant, prehistoric deals. [Third instance of "prehistoric."]
DEREK: So we could maybe do "The Milwaukee Sander: Stronger than a Moose."
WILLIE: Yeah, or, you know, "So Tough It's Almost Prehistoric." [Fourth instance of "prehistoric," and second instance of Willie's dream-slogan for the sander.]
DEREK: Yeah.

Willie and his wife's book would also present a number of tantalizing cross-marketing opportunities for the power sander:

DEREK: I'm sure you're gonna do bookstore appearances. Could you foresee bringing the sander along to any appearances? It doesn't have to be the main point of the thing—I mean, you're there to tell your story—but just bring it along, be like, "I represent, I endorse Milwaukee tools. I represent the Milwaukee sander."
WILLIE: Well, we could do that in a lot of different ways. Quite honestly, you know, we can put anything we want on our show as far as commercials go. Most of the personal appearances we're gonna do, like on Good Morning America for the book, that's something you talk about, is that we're a Milwaukee sponsor ... that they're a sponsor of ours and we're a spokesperson for Milwaukee.
DEREK: Could you see yourself showing, like, Matt Lauer how a sander works or something like that?
WILLIE: Oh, absolutely.
DEREK: That'd be great. If you can get Lauer to use the sander, something like that would, again, boost sales by several percent—just, Lauer and a sander would be amazing.
WILLIE: Yeah, what you'd do is just, maybe create something for him on a lathe or something with some antler and some nice wood and put it together and sand it down with him. You know, say, "Hey, here's how you're gonna use it."
DEREK: Yeah. That'd be balls-out amazing.
WILLIE: Yeah, that could be done.

As a minister, Willie makes many church appearances, hitting Star Talent's demographic sweet spot for the power sander:

DEREK: You say you do about 120 church appearances a year. Could you see yourself again incorporating the sander somehow into your church appearance? Doing something like sanding?
WILLIE: Oh, I guarantee you we're gonna do a lot of church appearances with the book. I mean, there's no question about that. We're gonna do a lot of Christian talk shows. We'll be on virtually every Christian radio show and talk show in the country.
DEREK: You could sand a cross. You can do something like that, right?
WILLIE: Oh, yeah, there's lots of ways we could incorporate the tool.
DEREK: We'd love to have you making some crosses, sanding down pews, anything that's wooden in the church.
WILLIE: Yeah, any of that stuff, and the fact that they're Christian-friendly would be a huge deal for them.
DEREK: It'd be a huge bonus.

No celebrity-endorsed product is complete without an infomercial:

DEREK: Let me tell you about the infomercial idea. We're thinking about it as a starter, as a sort of test run before we do any launch or national campaign. It's an infomercial sometime between 2:30, 4:30 a.m., kind of the prime infomercial spot, you really get the late night, late owls ... maybe a half-hour shot of you—the shoot would take no more than one, maybe two days. It would be a recurring thing. You know, off the record, this is confidential, and it's not discussed yet, but the idea would be something like six to eight thousand dollars for the one-day shoot ... something in that ballpark, and if it succeeds, if the Willie Aames-endorsed power sander takes off, then we move into the other things. You know, the tie-ins with the outdoors show, with the church appearances, with the book signings.... We'd send you up a full contract, but this is just very preliminary.
WILLIE: Yeah, well, on a preliminary deal, yeah, I'd be interested.
DEREK: And as I said, we'd love to expand with the resurrection of the Bible Guy character.

Finally, because the Milwaukee representative I e-mailed was such a good guy, I tried to wangle him the autographed headshot he requested of Derek:

DEREK: What we'd love from you is if you have any pictures of you sanding, sort of an image for our marketing people.... And this, this is an insider question, kind of personal. One of our head guys, he's a huge fan of yours, and he would love if you had any headshots of you.
WILLIE: Yeah, sure.
DEREK: Really? And maybe write something about sanding just for the kick of it?
WILLIE: Yeah, sure, go ahead.

We haven't received the promised photograph or headshot, but we expect to any day.

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CLICK HERE TO READ DEREK'S EMAILS TO MILWAUKEE