Young Entrepreneur Blog

In 2006 I was told that I may have had the viral marketing story of 2006 (see here and here)

But there can be no doubt that the big viral marketing story of 2007 has been the “Will It Blend” videos. You can see some of them here.

The brains behind this campaign is Tom Dickson (CEO of Blendtec).  Thanks to Tom the site has had over 36 million unique visitors. Sales have gone through the roof, and the product has been featured on everything from national news channels to the Jay Leno Show.

Here is the part that makes me laugh…

Recently there was a debate on CNN with two “marketing experts”, one of these “experts” claimed that Dickson was foolish to market the product this way, his reasoning? “it is a lot of work”.

What a load of nonsense!

He then went on to say that he should have just taken a full page ad in the New York Times ($50,000).

The lesson here is not to trust anyone who claims to be a marketing expert.

On a sidenote, don’t trust anyone who says they are a plumber either… my sink is leaking

Adios

Here is where the story gets ridiculous and infuriating. Incredibly, Dickson showed a CNN clip where two marketing “experts” were debating his YouTube campaign. One of them actually stated that Dickson was foolish to market this way because it was “a lot of work.” He said that if Blendtec wanted to sell blenders, they should just buy an ad in the newspaper. How stupid can one be? As Dickson mentioned, a full page ad in the New York Times could cost well north of $50,000 and likely would generate very few sales.

The scarey thing is that these kinds of marketing “experts” are everywhere. They are so incredibly dense that they would want a client to spend millions on an advertising campaign instead of spending $50 and taking an afternoon to shoot a homemade video.