Imagine a staid, little blender company attaining cult status because of its YouTube videos. It happened—and the company is reaping the financial rewards.
Company Profile
Company: Blendtec
Product: Blenders
YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/user/Blendtec
Websites: www.blendtec.com, www.willitblend.com
The company behind the cult video campaign is Blendtec, a division of a company called K-TEC. The parent company has been around since 1975, when company founder Tom Dickson created the K-TEC Kitchen Mill, an innovative way to mill wheat into flour. The company adopted the Blendtec name in 1999, when Dickson jumped on the smoothie revolution by creating durable, high-performance blenders for commercial use. Some of Blendtec’s revolutions included electronic controls, programmable blend cycles, and other innovations for the company’s commercial customers.
Today, Blendtec commercial blenders, dispensers, and mixers are found in restaurants, juice bars, ice cream parlors, and similar establishments around the world. The company has branched out to create consumer versions of its best-selling commercial products for use by trend-setting homemakers. These consumer products include the Mix n’ Blend mixer/blender combo, the Total Blender tabletop blender, and the Connoisseur, the first in-counter blender designed for home use. Although the bulk of Blendtec’s sales continue to be business-to-business, the new consumer line has become an ever-increasing part of the company’s mix, with the typical customer being a female, aged 30–60.
The company’s growing consumer focus inspired its foray into YouTube marketing. Blendtec got the idea for its videos from actual destructive testing that had been going on at the company for years. Marketing Director George Wright happened upon owner Tom Dickson feeding a 2”×2” wooden board into a commercial blender as part of a destructive test and found it fascinating. He thought that others might get a kick out of watching the process, and the idea of creating a video was born.
The result was the production and release of the first five “Will It Blend?” videos. In these videos, Tom Dickson fed various items into Blendtec blenders to see whether they would actually blend. The items featured in these first videos included marbles, a rake handle, ice (blending into snow), a McDonald’s Big Mac Extra Value Meal, and CoChicken (half Coke and half chicken). They all blended.
The videos proved quite YouTube-worthy. The response was immediate. Within the first week of posting, the company’s videos had six million views. That’s a true viral video!
The key to the “Will It Blend?” videos is that they’re entertaining; it also helps that Dickson is a personable and completely engaged host. Will the Blendtec blender actually handle the item fed into it? What will the results look like? Will the results surprise Tom? What will he choose to blend next?
Today, the company produces two types of “Will It Blend?” videos: Try This at Home and Don’t Try This at Home. The latter category is by far the most popular because it features some ridiculous things to blend. (My favorite is the Chuck Norris video in which Tom Dickson blends a variety of action figures—with the Chuck Norris figure proving victorious.) As of May 2008, Blendtec has 64 videos online, and they’re attracting 200 million views a month.
Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” videos are amazingly cost-effective. Each video costs less than $20 to produce, using a typical consumer camcorder and existing locations in and around the company’s office. There’s nothing overly fancy here.
George Wright remarks, “We try to capture the sheer surprise of the blend…no preconceived notions, loose script, etc. For the most part, we will not even show Tom what we are blending until we are set up and ready to roll film.”
So, that’s how they get that spontaneous look and feel!
The sales of the Total Blender machine featured in the videos are a direct measurement of the effectiveness of the “Will It Blend?” campaign. Since the advent of the campaign, Total Blender sales have increased 500%. Incredible!
Blendtec sticks with what works. The most recent of its 64 videos looks quite similar to the company’s original videos; each video is short and sweet. What has changed is the fan response—several of the subjects have been suggested by the company’s fans. (And, yes, the company’s videos have a huge fan base—including the band Weezer, who featured Blendtec’s Tom Dickson in the video for its song “Pork and Beans.”)
Wright believes that YouTube is critical to the company’s ongoing success, and a crucial part of its marketing mix. The company has also expanded the “Will It Blend?” concept into the Will It Blog? blog, t-shirts, DVDs, live performances at trade shows, and its own website where it offers all the videos for online viewing and its line of blenders for purchase.
Going forward, the company has some new products in the pipeline that should help it build on the “Will It Blend?” concept. As George Wright notes, “‘Will It Blend?’ has been a great launch pad for us to become a recognized brand. We will continue to leverage this brand for new products.”
And it all started with five simple YouTube videos….
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