Will It Blend’s Viral Video Success
Will It Blend?
What happens when you blend one part Mr. Wizard with one part Spike TV and one part iPhone? Millions of viewers tune in to watch.
In late 2006, Utah-based Blendtec spent around $50 to launch a series of videos in which the company CEO, Tom Dickson, does a simple product demonstration of the Blendtec brand home and commercial blenders. He uses their blenders to grind everyday household objects including golf balls, soft drink cans, a Hannah Montana doll and an iPhone.
Within 5 days, over 6 million visitors had landed on the company’s website.
“Lately, I’ve been feeling a need to get back to my manly roots,” Dickson says in the opening of one of the videos at the WillItBlend.com micro-site for Blendtec. “So I decided to build myself a man cave to relax and unwind,” he adds.
Next, Dickson takes a collection of objects that just don’t fit in a man cave and tosses them into the 1500 watt blender. Moments later, he has blended a mixture of a lava lamp, a Hannah Montana doll, a raspberry wine cooler bottle and a serving of quiche.
It’s a stunt that would make Ron Popeil jealous and Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor proud.
The short, quirky videos are entertaining and fun. And also a powerful demonstration of the product. In fact, the videos have contributed to a 6x increase in sales as of August 2008, thanks mostly to millions of viewings at YouTube.
In addition to gaining pop-culture celebrity status over the Internet, Dickson has even appeared as a guest on The Today Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
While my suspicions are that the man cave video segment may have required some special editing to actually blend all of the ingredients, it is apparent from some of the other videos that these are heavy duty blenders. In other words, if a Blendtec blender can’t blend it, you’d don’t need to drink it
Tags: social media
