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A blend of marketing activity
The festive period offered the chance to catch-up on a little not-for-work web stuff which for me started on Youtube. My intention was to investigate how to upload a video of the kids to the site and then embed the code for the page into our personal blog so that grandparents and the like could receive a more personal, and visual, happy new year message. However, with time on my hands I found myself quickly distracted by some of the bizarre offerings on the Youtube home page, one of which struck me as vaguely compelling.
The link was titled “Will it blend? - ipod”, and just a click later I found myself watching the introductory sequence of a presentation by Tom Dickson, a man in a white lab coat and safety goggles, who asks the question - “Will it blend?”.
Tom produces his old ipod, and while explaining that he had upgraded to a Nano, and with the warning “not to try this at home” displayed at the bottom of the screen, Tom rather casually chucked his ipod into the blender, closed the lid and hit the switch. Within what seemed like seconds Tom stopped the blender and emptied what looked like a collection of old metal dental fillings onto his workbench. Up until this point, and perhaps because I was on holiday, I had assumed this to be some kind of spoof, or a derivation of the old Joe Cartoon animation “Frog in a blender” (NOT FOR THE FAINT HEARTED).
It struck me that this would be a great way to market a blender, particularly since it combined two of the most pervasively popular forms of entertainment - music and home video, and their most commonly accessed means of delivery - the ipod and Youtube, with something as boring as a blender, and it made it fun. I started to think of what else you could do to build on this theme. How naive I was - Tom had it covered. Further investigation, since I was now in work-mode, revealed the following marketing mix.
Not only had Tom blended an ipod, he had also blended a golf club, light bulbs, oysters, a can of soup and any number of miscellaneous items and all his ‘work’ can be seen at his site http://www.willitblend.com/. At this site visitors can also purchase ‘Will it Blend?’ merchandise - t-shirts and caps. They can see examples of blending activity that you can try at home, visit the site of the company that Tom works for - Blendtec - and visit its site dedicated to industrial blenders. Furthermore, and adding into the contemporary mix of marketing, the inquisitive can also check out the “Will it Blog” section where (and this completed the circle for me) they can contribute to the debate regarding the final price of the blended ipod on Ebay where it was auctioned before Christmas. Now that is a well blended marketing mix.
Just read the “Will it Blend?” blog entry. Adrian, top work! I just spat my salad all over the desk. Happy New Year to all you guys. David