Learning from a Blender
January 5, 2010 by Kevin Hazard, Web Hosting Evangelist in Evangelist's Corner, The Planet
Will it blend? That is the question.
If those words evoke mental images of diced golf balls, shredded iPhones or powdered marbles, you’re one of the tens of millions of people who have watched Blendtec’s virally successful “Will It Blend?” video series.
At a conference I recently attended, Blendtec Vice President of Marketing & Sales George Wright explained the inspirational genesis of the “Will It Blend?” phenomenon: While walking through the company’s factory, he came across a pile of wood shavings on the floor. Since wood isn’t used in the production of most commercial-grade blenders, the sight was unexpected and borderline worrisome. When a few assembly line workers saw his confusion – and concern – they explained that company founder Tom Dickson was testing a new blade design on a two-by-four and that everything would be cleaned up quickly … No big deal.
This kind of “testing” didn’t cause much of a commotion in the factory, but George saw potential. Armed with a $50 starting budget, “Will it Blend?” was born. As the series approaches its 100th YouTube upload and 100,000,000th video view, it’s fairly safe to say that the $50 was well spent.
What made the video a success? What was the secret sauce? George’s first bullet-point: Obviousness.
Of course people want to see a blender face off against a Chuck Norris action figure. Of course they’ll tune in to see you destroy the impossible-to-get-at-the-time iPhone. Of course people want to see why your blender is better at blending than any other blender on the face of the planet. Is that the case? I can’t say I’ve seen any other blender destroy a rake handle:
Taking Blendtec’s “obviousness” cue, I headed up to our H2 data center with a video camera and came back with a video. Do you want to see it? 
-Kevin
P.S. Yes, I jumped when the rake hit the blade the first time.
January 5th, 2010 at 9:51 am
Just make sure you leave my servers alone while your wandering H2 looking for something to blend
January 5th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by The Planet – Kevin, The Planet – Kevin. The Planet – Kevin said: The Planet Blog: Learning from a Blender http://bit.ly/8jiDi7 [...]
January 6th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
I was sitting next to Kevin while filming and was generally frightened during the whole demo that the blender would explode and giant splinters would fly everywhere, one of them getting me in the eye. Luckily, that didn’t happen.
January 6th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
One huge chunk of rake handle managed to make it about 10 feet away from him on the stage. I echoed Katie’s sentiments.
And Tim, your server was not harmed in the making of the upcoming video.
January 7th, 2010 at 2:53 pm
[...] the end of my Learning from a Blender post, I alluded to a project George Wright’s presentation inspired. Armed with a video camera [...]