Above, Blendtec's Tom Dickson asks "Will it blend?"

Inspiration

A year ago, Blendtec hired George Wright to head their newly created marketing department. George began his job by tightening up the company logo and branding, working with a web master to update the company web site, and a few other typical processes. While walking around the company one day, a trail of sawdust on the floor led him to an odd sight. Tom Dickson, the company's CEO, founder, and blender designer, was trying to test the limits and/or break one of their blenders by "blending" some wood. George says that he was initially "shocked" by this example of "extreme blending" but it was also a bit of fun to watch too. With the spark of a funny "viral video" concept in mind, they went on a $50 shopping spree buying various odds and ends, set up a camera, recorded some short blending segments, and put a few videos online.

Popularity Grows

The "Will It Blend?" videos began to have a life of their own. The videos gained a cult following online and began to bring quite a lot of traffic to their web site. Of course, this also meant that they gained quite a few extra sales as well. The decision was made to buy a domain with the "willitblend" wording, new videos were created to celebrate various holidays, and their new site has continued to be quite a hit.

A year after putting their videos online, Blendtec's blenders are now being featured on popular TV shows like Jay Leno and Good Morning America. While they had previously been trying to get a spot on a cooking show, now the Food Network has asked Blendtec if they could feature the Blendtec blender on the "I Want That" show. Other companies were even contacting Blendtec to see if they would "blend" their products either for internal marketing or for their "Will It Blend?" series. They were even featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article.

Lessons Learned

There were a few lessons that can be taken away from Wright's experience.

Wright says that it a great way to "Market in a different, fun way, where people can talk about your products." He says that most "bigger companies struggle with this [viral marketing] because it's edgy, out there. But it's easy with small companies because of latitude, if the message is honest, there's no risk." I interpret this to mean that yes, the blender really works and although it's technically a commercial for their company, they're really not putting you on. The video is not giving false or questionable promises like those "best sleep you've ever had" commercials for beds, "quick and easy weight loss (actual results will vary) with just a pill" commercials that you might see from time to time. They really do blend odd things with a heavy weight blender, so the odds are good that if you buy one, it's not going to break trying to blend a couple chunks of ice for your cocktail.

Viral video hosting does not have to be a black hole sucking up your budget or a profitless endeavor. While not all virla videos will be a hit, you can start with $50 and a little bit of unpaid talent. Some, like Blendtec, begin by placing their viral videos on their own web site. But once popularity picks up, this can be quite a drain on server resources. And depending on your hosting company, beyond the price you are willing to pay for video hosting/data transfer costs. You can certainly place your videos in many of the obvious spots like Google's You Tube, Yahoo Video, and a huge plethora of video hosting sites. But, there are others like Revver.com who will provide you with a share of the profits from advertisements that run with your video. Wright said that with the influx of visitors to their sites, this is a great way to earn a little extra revenue from companies willing to advertise on on your popular videos.

Success breeds success. If you really do well, like Blendtec, companies might send you "100s of thousands of requests to blend their products" says Wright. Blendtec is even being paid to blend things like CDs for a radio station who is marketing itself as the "new blend in radio". The radio station in turn advertised the blendtec segment, thus more free advertisement for Blendtec. Wright says that because of opportunities like this, their marketing group actually bring additional revenue into their company.

Exposure and links from unexpected places. Of course, like myself, quite a few people are now discovering Blendtec through their iPod or iPhone blending videos. Blendtec is turning into an internet pop culture icon. Posts on various blogs and web sites include references to Blendtec. Editors for large online magazines, brick and mortar companies, etc. are reading some of these posts. And so... If you hit a nerve with the right crowd, Wright says that "the exposure is great". In regards to SEO, I'd add that normally it would be quite difficult to get links from high profile sites / companies like AOL, MTV, etc. but if your video is popular and hits the right momentum, you never know who or where people will be posting about your products. And these are free links hitting thousands of eye balls and in turn, increasing the chance that even more people will link to your site.

Viral video targets new, some times undiscovered markets. Like many blender manufacturers, Blendtec has previously been targeting health clubs, bars, and similar commercial food preparers via in store demos at large food outlets like Costco Wholesale. He says that since their videos have become popular, they have a demographic emerging outside of their traditional commercial demographic, many newer Blendtec buyers are families or male (I'd guess perhaps due to the "Wile E. Coyote"-like tendencies that we sometimes exhibit in real life). He says that they have had several reports of children dragging their parents to the appliance section specifically for a blender. Product recognition is certainly being built as these parents often have a "oh, yeah the guy that blends golf balls used this one" when asked why they had chose to pick up a Blendtec blender.

Final Thoughts

As a final take away, think about the concept of "permission" based marketing. When you set up an advertisement in a search engine, on the side of a web page, on the radio, TV, etc. you are crossing your fingers that the target audience will not "tune you out" by blocking your ad, by using time/commercial skip technology, by changing the channel, or other methods. With viral videos you are certainly casting a wide net for your potential audience, Wright says that those who appreciate your advertisement will spread your message on their own, and to others who are also likely to appreciate your video because they won't see it as an advertisement. You essentially gain their permission to advertise to them by amusing them, keeping them interested in your ideas, etc. As in Blendtec's case, some go as far as to create their own spoof and video tributes.

Understand that you not only gain permission to from video viewers to market to them in a non-traditional way, but you may also be giving some of your fans to criticize your company/products in a new way as well. Although it probably wasn't their best moment, I'm putting a link to this new video, where an attempt to blend a garden rake at Internet Retailer 2007 didn't go off quite as planned. They were only able to blend about 3/4 of the rake before the blender sputtered out. Before watching the video, think about the simple fact that Blendtec is popular enough, that a conference attendee was filming a low quality capture of the Blendtec demo in the first place, in order to post it online.

In just over a month, this blooper has had over 100 comments - both good and bad. Either way, this is additional free advertising for Blendtec. While one could get discouraged by some of the negative comments, some of the posters asked questions like... would a normal blender even blend any of that rake? Were there any electrical problems? I think most people, even with the failed attempt, would still think that this was a pretty amazing demo of the Blendtec blender and the pull that viral videos can have. I found this comment in the video's post pretty much sums things up:

snowmatt1 "I think is hilarious. I love the blendtec videos, and it makes it more real knowing it occasionally doesn't work. and i think it is really funny that these guys instantly recognized it as a youtube moment. Just goes to show you how important youtube has become in our lives...."

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