Will it blend?

I’m always impressed when a business figures out a formula for participatory marketing.

Taking cue from what I guess to be a mashup of the 1976 SNL sketch in which Dan Aykroyd hosts an infomercial for the Super Bass-o-Matic 76 and David Letterman’s series “Will it Float?”, the makers of Blendtec blenders have coined the term “Extreme Blending” and are advertising, merchandising (yes, selling t-shirts), and selling their blenders thanks to the ingenious “Will it Blend?” series on YouTube.

Blendtec manages to transcend the 30-second spot with a series of videos in which they abuse their blenders with all kinds of objects that are not supposed to be blended in order to demonstrate the power of their model. Unlike TV infomercials for knives that are shown to cut through pipe and then still be sharp enough to cut tomatoes, Blendtec has made the entire focus of their marketing campaign blending household objects.

So far they have blended a rake, a value meal, marbles, an iPod, golf balls, hockey pucks, oysters on the half shell, video tapes, a golf club, light bulbs, Christmas dinner, toy cars, a can of soup and the list goes on. My favorite has to be the Rake Handle and Thanksgiving Dinner for toothless Uncle Floyd.

Their retro ’60s game show style and quirky delivery is what makes their series so much fun and inviting for others to imitate:

Will it Bend?
Will it Accord?
Will it Hydrate?
Will it Blend? – Eggs

And when the series pulled a bait and switch with their crowbar episode (blending cell phones on the set instead of the crowbar) the YouTube community responded with 950 text comments and a handful of video responses including a spoof from the Will it Accord producer entitled Will it Accord? -Cat.

All I can say is … Tom Dickson is my homeboy.