Viral Marketing
“Will it blend?” is a marketing campaign started in 2004 by BlendTec that Mike Mooney brought to our attention during the Broadstreet Bridges conference. It is “the best case study with viral marketing,” Mooney says.
With a $50 budget, George Wright bought a lab coat and basic necessities to film short youtube videos of BlendTec’s CEO Tom Dickson crushing various objects in their blenders.
“Blenders aren’t cool. Blending crazy stuff is.” – Mike Mooney
It is an amazing story of how a business can utilize the web as an inexpensive, easy and successful marketing tool. Within 5 days Mooneys says BlendTec had 6,000,000 views on youtube. Today they have 188,000,000 views of the video series and their sales increased by 1,000%.
Did you get that? BlendTec’s sales have increased by 1,000%.
These industrial blenders are now costing from $300-$400.
When it comes to viral marketing, you have to use imagination, creativity, and you have to dream big because the sky’s the limit.
Watch our video from the Broadstreet Bridges conference to hear Mike Mooney talking.
I had the pleasure of listening to theDuct Tape Marketing Podcast recently, the March 23 episode featureing David Meerman Scott, who recently wrote the book called World Wide Rave. David makes some really interesting points about how trends get started on the Internet. He provides numerous case studies on viral videos and blog posts, and how people have used these to build their businesses.
Examples included Blendtec, a maker of heavy-duty blenders who increased sales tenfold after creating some wacky videos and the site Will it Blend?, showing their blenders chop non-food items. He also talks about Helaine Smith, DMD, a Boston Dentist who quintupled her business after publishing a free e-book called "Healthy Mouth, Healthy Sex."
Seth Godin had a great post recently -- a video showing a guy dancing, then two guys dancing, then... well, watch for yourself.
Seth's point is the first guy is very important, and the 3rd guy is very important, but Guy #49 is pretty much a dime a dozen. I'd like to put in a word for Guy #2 who took a real risk by joining Guy #1. He could have been rejected, but he joined in and believed in the movement. Guy #3 gets credit for the big wave but maybe there would not be a Guy #3 if not for Guy #2? Read Seth's comments at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/06/guy-3.html
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