Alex Rapp
Blog Post #1 – Unique Earned Media
One of my favorite things to watch when I was younger was Tom Dickson’s, Owner of BlendTec, Youtube series Will it Blend? The show consisted of him showing the power of his BlendTec blender by blending various unusual items. It started with smaller items like golf balls, and then kept getting more wild as popularity grew. He started blending iPads, iPhones, and even a Guitar Hero III Guitar. These videos in turn become one of the best viral video campaigns on Youtube. BlendTec currently sits at over 265 million views on the series as a whole, and still produces content today.
While this is owned media that he created with his company, the amount of buzz created from the series is why I found out about it. The only big social media present was Facebook back in 2007, but he was being shared like crazy, along with many other news websites writing about it. With all of this exposure he was able to appear on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, and some other news, radio, etc.
The owned content created earned media by people sharing about what he should blend next, sending him items to blend and posting about it. I didn’t realize it when I was younger, but I think for the brand and product he had, it was a genius marketing technique.
His audience was truly everyone, besides the target market of someone wanting a long lasting, universal blender. In a sense it was infomercials everyone wanted to watch. You were being entertained and sold to at the same time, without feeling like it. It wasn’t a rational need, but it felt like it was a justifiable purchase, especially as a kid.
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