Social Media Case Study – Blendtec and YouTube

I have been asked to do a series of social media case studies to illustrate how some individuals and businesses have cleverly leveraged various platforms to raise awareness of their brands and develop their fan base.

My first case study is the brainchild of Tom Dickson who owns Blendtec, a company that manufactures food blenders in the US. Many of you will have already seen some of his videos which have been in circulation since 2007 and have been extremely viral on YouTube, but you may not be aware of some of the results from these videos.

Let me start by setting the scene. Tom decided to produce a series of home videos of him blending day to day household items to demonstrate the power of his product. The series was called ‘Will it Blend’ and produced a massive following. Before I go into too much detail let me show you one of my favourites… The iPhone!

Fantastic, I am sure you would agree. It wasn’t long before fans were requesting the items they would like to see blended and to date the Blendtec videos have collectively received over 130 million viewings which is incredible. Cheap to produce, but an engaging idea and Tom had instant fame and brand recognition.

Other items blended include a whole cooked chicken with coke (Cochicken), Pens, Golf Balls and one of my favourites the rake handle. There are many many more and I warn you… you may get sucked in!

I also love how the story has evolved with the blending of an iPad and iPhone 4. They also integrated these things into their own website running competitions to win an iPhone which gave them data and other opportunities to engage with their audience.

Other brands then got involved profiling their products and services for example Nike & Bic Lighters. They started to get paid to blend stuff for other peoples audiences.

But what does that mean and how have they benefited I hear you ask…? Well actually they have benefited in many ways. The obvious is the increase in sales. I remember reading that they saw a 400% increase in sales although when researching for this blog couldn’t find the article but the upturn was significant.

Then followed the guest appearances on other TV and radio shows including NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Priceless PR. They also won several marketing awards which again fuelled the fire and kept people talking about them.

Charities even started to benefit when they sold blended items on ebay donating the money to good causes. The iPhone raised $901.

So I just wanted to share with you this incredible story which I have been using in my talks for the last 3 years and hope it has given you a little inspiration.

I will follow this up with many more case studies and please re-tweet if you liked it!