[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAl28d6tbko]
Folks are used to me banging on about how essential “the big idea” is in marketing today, but genuinely big ideas are still a rarity. There are loads of businesses and agencies that think their’s are humongous, but that’s usually only because their sense of proportion has deserted them.
I guess you have to have a nose for these things? For example, Tom Dickson sells high-powered blenders. He’s not Microsoft by any means, but he has created a campaign based on an idea that has taken off, big time. I mean, if your USP is “power” what better way to drive this home than to take on challenges. And that’s exactly what he has done, filming each challenge and posting it on You-Tube, then building a social networking campaign around it that has taken the imagination of folks all over America.
Of course, a big slice of his audience are youths, but that’s OK, because apparently evidence is revealing that they share this content with parents, if not by showing them the films, certainly by dragging them to see the challenges reproduced (on a less dramatic scale) in their local stores. Yes, while this is a campaign that wouldn’t have been possible without social networking, it’s real beauty for me is that way it is integrated. The films tie-in with the in-store demos and the advertising and the point-of-sale material and more. The contribution this is making to his brand character, the reinforcement of his “brand promise” and the new “Brandships” he is acquiring as a result are priceless and the “will it blend” catch phrase is rapidly becoming the kind of equity that we Brits haven’t heard since “Nice one Cyril!”.
Michael Weaver
April 22, 2010