It's 2006.
My Chemical Romance. The Arctic Monkeys. Justin Timberlake.
The West Coast Eagles were about the beat the Sydney Swans to win their 4th Premiership.
And a blender company in the US was about to show the world what a great content marketing strategy was capable of.
Blendtec looks to branch out
Enter Tom Dickson (above), engineer, inventor and founder of American blender company Blendtec.
After decades of perfecting the most badass blender on the market, Blendtec was doing well in commercial settings like juice bars and smoothie bars.
The direct-to-consumer retail market was proving a tougher nut to crack. To make headway into this new market, George Wright was brought on as Marketing Director in January of 2006.
George was intrigued by founder Tom's regular product testing. In true mad scientist form, Tom would blend 2x4 planks of wood, among other non-food objects, in the Blendtec lab with to test blender performance. An audience of intrigued staff were regularly in attendance.
Will It Blend is born
George suggested they turn these unique product tests into videos for the company.
The result was a short video of Tom putting unconventional items like marbles into a BlendTec blender, and seeing if they would blend.
Watch the very first episode of Will It Blend below;
With the office as the backdrop, cheezy old school game show music, and little to no explanation of why or what was going on, this was not a production destined to win an Oscar.
It was however, perfect strategic approach for ... the entire internet.
Within 5 days of the first video going live on a new video platform called Youtube, they had 6 million views and sales had exploded a thousand percent. *
Turn it up to 11 and watch the sales roll in
Blendtec proceeded to crank out 70 more videos in the next 24 months, racking up 200,000 channel subscribers, 65 million views and 120 Million visitors to willitblend.com. Not to mention sales were up 700%.
Founder Tom Dickson became a media sensation, appearing on The TONIGHT Show with Jay Leno, The TODAY Show and The Discovery Channel. ***
So, how did blender product demo videos turn into viral, transformational content marketing genius?
The winning ingredients to a viral smash hit
Firstly, the title is perfect. It's the foundation of the whole genius idea.
If they called it "The New Blendtec Total Blender - Product Demo 1 ", it would have been dead on arrival. "Will it Blend" doesn't sound like an ad, and it doesn't sound like an informercial.
It's also direct and informative. Before the user sees a single frame of the video, they have a clear context for what they are about to see. This is a seriously misunderstood aspect of digital marketing. Mystery does not entice the user; context does.
Mystery does not entice the user; context does.
This is a great example of the strategic work that is done on any great content marketing idea BEFORE a camera is turned on.
Then there's execution of the early videos.
Tongue in cheek, self deprecating and gloriously low budget featuring nerdy, awkward founder Tom. The music is funny and very non-threatening, non-ad like. There is no listing of product benefits or hard core call to action at the end.
Tongue in cheek, self deprecating and gloriously low budget
They were a decade ahead of their time with this low-budget approach. We are now buried in a time of DIY video, as we see audiences respond to a more authentic, less polished type of content across all social media platforms. Way before Vine, and way way before tiktok, Tom was ahead of the game.
Finally, Will it Blend communicated the strength, power and quality of the brand in a light and entertaining format. This alignment of brand and content is my favourite aspect of the strategy.
Will it Blend communicated the strength, power and quality of the brand in a light and entertaining format that perfectly aligned brand and content
Aso f late 2023, Tom & Blendtec are still going strong. Still making videos and selling blenders
throughout the world, even here in Australia, with the Blendtec youtube channel up to 850,000 subscribers and 293 million views.
So keep rockin my friends and keep marketing, more vids and blogerinos coming soon.
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