Will It Blend: How an Internet Meme was created

For those not in the know, an internet meme is a saying, image or idea that spreads like wildfire across the internet until it is embedded in the global online consciousness. Memes are self perpetuating, in that a loyal following forms around them and mrore content is created without the creator of the meme asking (or expecting it).

While most memes are created organically, sometimes a company can create one, and while the chance of this happening are mostly slim, if it is pulled off the exposure can be worth millions of dollars of free publicity.

There has been one internet meme started by a company that stands head and shoulders above everyone else and it was created by Tom Dickson, the owner of a company called Blendtec.

Tom had a good quality blender that he wanted to market to people however he wanted to market it in a different way. The competitive advantage of Tom’s blenders was their durability and Tom wanted to showcase that to people. The idea that Tom came across launched one of the biggest company organized internet memes of all time. Tom had the idea to create a web series called ‘Will It Blend’ where he would blend a random item in his blender to see if that item could blend or not. Because Tom’s blenders were high quality they could blend things you would never expect could be blended… such as an iPhone!

Where Tom was so successful was not just the fact that he made a video that got a lot of views, but that he was able to replicate this success over and over again with videos blending all kinds of random items. Even now browsing YouTube on a totally unrelated video you will hear people commenting “This is great, but will it Blend?”.

Please enjoy some of his other videos below:

iPad