Humor as a Viral Marketing Tool

I can sum up practically everything I need to tell you about humor as a viral marketing tool in 3 words: “Will It Blend?”

If you haven't seen the “Will It Blend?” videos, you haven't been spending nearly enough time studying marketing on the Internet. In 2006, the Blentec Company launched the first video starring company founder Tom Dickson putting some marbles in one of the company’s machines to see if they would blend.

They did. Since then Dickson has blended an iPhone, glow sticks, and even some bad-buy action figures along with a Chuck Norris action figure. Of course, everything that's hit the Blentec blender has, indeed, blended. Except Chuck Norris, of course.

You might not get how funny or how effective these videos are just by reading about them here. But how about these numbers: The Blentec “Will It Blend?” videos had gotten 83 million views on YouTube by mid-2009 according to an article on Mahalo.

While I was looking up the videos for this article, I found one that was subtitled. In Polish.

And that's not all. Dickson has appeared on The Tonight Show and one of his blending creations, the “cochicken” (a blended mix of a half a chicken and 12 ounces of Coca-Cola), was served to Meredith Viera on the Today show.

The “Will It Blend?” video featuring the iPad alone has gotten over 4 million page views so far.

What do you think that all of this attention has done for Blentec? Exactly. Anyone who has seen a “Will It Blend?” video knows that if a Blentec blender will handle an iPad, it's going to work fine mixing frozen cocktails or fruit smoothies. The founder himself has said that the videos have done wonders for the company's image.

All because someone decided to have fun with a blender and film the results.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I'm talking about using humor as a marketing tool. Humor is one of the tools in the experiential marketing kit—something that provides value in and of itself. Who doesn't like a good laugh?

And who doesn't want to share that laugh with their friends and family?

Taking our companies viral is an Internet marketer's dream. But while the Internet is a huge market, the fact is that each and every one of us has a lot of competition. And I'm not just talking competition from our fellow Internet marketers.

All of us are also competing for prospects' attention with their friends' blogs and Facebook accounts, news coverage, new music  . . . and the “Will It Blend?” videos.

That's the kind of competition we face because people's attention spans are limited and so is their time. They may spend 15 minutes watching “Will It Blend?” videos, but then they're ready to either find something else new and compelling or they want to get off the Internet.

The good news is that most Internet marketers I know are terrifically smart, dedicated, and funny people. Once you see how effective humor is as a marketing tool, I don't think you're going to have any trouble finding ways to use it.