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.