The Ultimate Blend- How Blendtec Crafted the Perfect Viral Ad Campaign

It’s no secret that the Internet has completely revolutionized the world of advertising. However, the digital medium is still relatively young, and only recently have businesses really cracked the code on how to effectively reach millions of people at an extremely low cost. Of all the online ad campaigns I’ve seen, and considering that I spend most of my day watching YouTube, I’ve seen them all, “Will It Blend?” by Blendtec is the best by far.

This campaign successfully incorporates every single marketing tactic known to man. The result is incredible. I didn’t feel like adding together the number of views for all of their 71 videos, but a quick count of just the top 15 videos shows that the company has well over 30 million views on YouTube alone. Here is how they did it.

Total Search Engine Optimization

A core component of “Will It Blend’s” success is the brilliant use of keywords. In each video, Tom Dickson (founder of Blendtec) uses one of his high end blenders to destroy something. That something is usually a common or popular consumer product with a valuable keyword. Some of the valuable keywords that “Will It Blend” has cashed in on include IPhone, IPod, Halo 3, Wii, Chuck Norris, Transformers, Baseball, and Spam. The immense collection of valuable keywords allows Blendtec to literally suck traffic from all over the internet. The campaign is infinitely adaptable and able to incorporate almost any pop-culture reference.

Human Psychology

We humans don’t respond well to television advertising. It’s pushed on us while we are in the middle of watching our favorite shows. We see it as an intrusion and we try to ignore it.

“Will It Blend” is nothing like normal television advertising. Blendtec never tries to sell us blenders. The focus is always on if the object will blend. Each segment behaves more like a television show with blenders included as product placement. “Will It Blend” comes in under the radar, and we don’t raise any of our advertising defense “shields.”

Also, when we watch videos on the Internet, we are watching them by choice. When you click on something, you are choosing to watch it. We are psychologically much less likely to resist something we chose to look at.

Primal Appeal

There are two basic themes that will always trigger an intense fascination in human beings. You would be correct in guessing that those two themes are sex and destruction. While Blendtec hasn’t incorporated sex (at least not yet), there is no arguing that the central appeal of “Will It Blend” is mindless destruction.

Humor

“Will It Blend” is funny. Tom Dickson sports one of the world’s goofiest smiles and his cheesy advice, (“Don’t Breathe this”) could be described as “pretty ridiculous.” Dickson also makes jokes about pop-culture, which only strengthens his use of powerful keywords.

Catchy Theme and Powerful Branding

The retro music at the beginning of each video, (did this come from an old ad campaign?), Dickson’s personable demeanor and the consistent format have all worked together to build a memorable and powerful brand for Blendtec. Every single video reinforces positive things about the company.

• Blendtec doesn’t take itself too seriously.
• Blendtec makes powerful and high quality blenders.
• Blendtec is innovative.

I could go on to talk about how incredibly cost effective this campaign must be but I won’t. Instead I raise the question, what can you do to get creative and start using rich digital media to promote your business? Also, check out this interview with Tom Dickson.

Original here