How do you know when an online word-of-mouth campaign is successful? When the campaign itself becomes a revenue generator.Blendtec, a 186-employee company in Orem, Utah, set out last November to build brand awareness for its line of high-end home and commercial blenders. Its idea: Online-only marketing videos that show Chief Executive Tom Dickson blending up iPods, golf balls and other don’t-try-this-at-home ingredients in retro game-show shtick.
Within a week, the “Will It Blend?” videos hit it big on video-sharing site YouTube.com. Soon after, they also were uploaded to Revver.com, another video-sharing site. Ads featured at the end of the clips have garnered Blendtec $18,000 so far; Revver.com and Blendtec, a division of K-TEC Inc., split the revenue from ads. When the ad is clicked on, Blendtec gets 50% of the revenue.
And in another unexpected twist, the videos themselves have become a commodity. Companies are paying $5,000 on average to have Blendtec film promotions for those firms using the blenders. And the videos are branded with the Blendtec logo. Sales of the company’s home blenders were up 43% in 2006.
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