Will It Blend? How a $50 YouTube stunt sent Blendtec’s sales soaring 700 percent

Blendtec’s big bet wasn’t a budget-busting ad campaign; it was a single camcorder pointed at a blender shredding golf balls.

In 2006 that $50 experiment, christened “Will It Blend?”, rewrote the rules of product demos, pushed the company onto The Tonight Show, and turned a $400 kitchen workhorse into the most talked-about appliance on YouTube.

The first five “Will It Blend?” clips racked up 6 000 000 views inside a week—light-years faster than the 2006 YouTube average of 10 000 views for branded uploads. Those eyeballs weren’t just rubber-necking: they lifted Blendtec’s monthly web traffic 650 percent and tripled direct-to-consumer revenue before the company spent another dime on production.

Put bluntly, every thousand views earned back ≈$145 in blender sales—a return most Super Bowl ads still can’t match.

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In the early 2000s, Blendtec was exactly the kind of company you’d never hear about at a dinner party.

They made blenders. Great ones, actually—industrial-strength beasts that could crush ice, pulverize grain, and survive a nuclear winter. But unless you ran a smoothie bar in Salt Lake City, you probably didn’t know the name.

And that was the problem.

Blendtec had engineering chops and an unbeatable product, but their sales were stuck. Competitors like Vitamix and KitchenAid had cornered the consumer market with brand recognition and massive ad budgets. Blendtec? They had a few trade show booths and not much else.

Their flagship model cost $400—a tough sell when no one trusted the brand. Traditional ads were out of reach. Retail partnerships were drying up. The company needed a breakthrough.

What they had instead… was a guy in a lab coat and a box of marbles.

See the pitch like never before.

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It started, as many legendary marketing moves do, by accident.

Tom Dickson, Blendtec’s CEO and resident blender whisperer, was running durability tests in the company’s workshop—shoving 2x2s, rocks, and handfuls of marbles into the blenders to see what they could survive.

The marketing director walked by and had a flash of inspiration: This is completely insane… and kind of amazing.

What if they filmed it?

So they grabbed a $50 prop budget, a lab coat for Tom, and a camcorder. The premise was simple: take everyday (and not-so-everyday) objects—golf balls, rakes, smartphones—and toss them into the blender. The segment was called Will It Blend? and it leaned into the absurdity.

Tom played the role of mad scientist with deadpan perfection. He spoke calmly about “testing” an iPhone as it was reduced to smoky dust. It was weird. It was captivating. And in 2006, it was perfect for this new thing called YouTube.

The videos weren’t just slapstick—each one delivered a subtle but powerful marketing message: If this blender can annihilate a glow stick, it can handle your kale smoothie.

And crucially, the team didn’t just upload and hope. They optimized video descriptions with calls-to-action, linked back to product pages, and embraced the rising wave of blogs and social media. Tech sites, gadget nerds, and curious viewers couldn’t stop sharing.

One iPhone later, Blendtec wasn’t just a blender company. It was internet-famous.

What happened next was something no ad agency pitch deck could’ve predicted.

The first Will It Blend? video went viral. Then the second. Then the third. Soon, it was a phenomenon.

Millions of people—many of whom had never even searched for a blender—were watching a mild-mannered engineer vaporize tech gadgets for fun. The series racked up over 290 million views and counting.

And here’s the kicker: those views converted.

Blendtec’s sales exploded by 738% in the wake of the campaign. Revenue shot up to around $56 million, turning a once-obscure brand into a category leader. Not bad for a blender company that spent less on a viral video than most brands spend on lunch.

The impact wasn’t just financial. Will It Blend? gave Blendtec an identity. They weren’t just a blender brand—they were the blender brand. Indestructible. Playful. Clever. Cult-worthy.

It also helped write the modern content marketing playbook. Before "virality" became a strategy and YouTube became a battleground for brands, Blendtec quietly demonstrated that great content + smart distribution = magic.

The product didn’t change. The brand story did. And with it, Blendtec turned the humble blender into a meme machine—and their competition into dust.

$56,000,000 – Blendtec hit an estimated $56 million in annual revenue at its 2024 peak, showing how the once-niche brand has moved solidly into mid-market appliance territory.

694 – Headcount in 2024, implying a lean ≈ $80 k revenue-per-employee ratio for a hardware manufacturer.

295,489,862 – Lifetime views on Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?” channel as of 24 June 2025, keeping the campaign among YouTube’s longest-running branded hits.

6,000,000 – Views the very first five videos racked up in just five days—on a total production budget of roughly $50—illustrating a textbook low-cost viral launch.

300 mph – Tip speed of Blendtec’s blunt stainless-steel blade, fast enough to pulverise ice without needing razor-sharp edges.

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