Viral Marketing vs Idiot Marketing Experts

I just heard a great presentation from Tom Dickson, CEO of Blendtec. Blendtec is the company responsible for the “Will it Blend?” videos on YouTube in which Tom blends everything from garden rakes to cell phones. You can see some of them here. There have been close to 36 million views of these videos, and Dickson shared exactly how this viral campaign has helped his brand.

In addition to incredible media opportunities (including the Today Show and Jay Leno), online sales of the home blender have jumped by a factor of five times, and in-store sales have increased as well. Not bad results from a $50 investment…

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.

So here are two simple tips:

1) Be careful when choosing a marketing “expert.”
2) Don’t discount viral marketing.

Oh yes, Dickson has one more tip for you. Don’t try to blend your cell phones at home. Or if you do, use a Blendtec blender.