This past Saturday we attended BiztechDay 2008 in San Francisco, an outstanding confab of business experts, event planners, pro-bloggers, social media gurus and all manner of innovators. Highlighting the event was Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Workweek” — a must-read for people who want to make the best use of their time and the Internet to free themselves to build their business and pursue their passion. This day-long conference of Web 2.0 and social networking was filled with great information for branding, blogging, and podcasting.
But the real highlight and lesson in viral marketing happened when the afternoon kicked off with a keynote by George Wright, marketing director at Blendtec, a Utah blender company. Blendtec needed more branding…that is, until George discovered that Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson spent a fair bit of time in the company lab, delighting in shoving things into the Blendtec blenders to see what would happen. That was the start of www.willitblend.comand a series of videos that took a $50.00 investment in a URL and a bit of video editing time to reach more than 5 million views. Tom Dickson has blended alarm clocks, marbles, and even blended an iPhone and auctioned off the mangled remains to raise almost $1,000 for charity.
Total views of the “Will It Blend” videos? Over 100 million. Did it do anything for their business? You bet. Their crazy videos along with national media coverage increased their sales seven-fold with carryover from their consumer products to their professional line of blenders for bars and restaurants.
Now we pose the question: Will it Blend at the press lunch, Lunch@Piero’s during CES? Stay tuned.
Good OS, maker of the easy to use gOS 3 Gadgets OS, is offering on eBay a collector’s item PC that pays tribute to Google Android. This one-of-a-kind PC will be up for only six more days. To place your bid, go to ebay.com and search for “Android G2 PC” and for more details go to http://www.thinkgos.com.
The G2 PC runs gOS 3 Gadgets and was built with the VIA C7-based Nano-ITX board. This is a one of a kind collector’s item and money raised by the auction will go to DonorsChoose.org via the TechCrunch Challenge, a listing of projects designed to inspire the future tech leaders of tomorrow.
There may be rocky news on Wall Street, but here’s some good news: We’re extending the early bird discount for sponsorship at Lunch @ Piero’s till October 31. Innovative companies and press can meet each other at Lunch @ Piero’s across from the Las Vegas Convention Center January 8 and 9, 2009. It’s better and less hassle than a year of media tours. Now that makes just plain good economic and logistical sense. Watch the video below for more, including some tips for enjoying some natural beauty, road trips and historic sites around Las Vegas during CES by clicking on the “Las Vegas Tips” link in the video below.
Reporters and bloggers pressed to deliver lots of meaningful stories during CES can barely afford to take a break, so we’ve created Lunch @ Piero’s as the ideal working lunch where they can grab a bite and meet execs and see exciting technologies they might not otherwise see on the show floor. Companies can inquire about becoming a sponsor at http://www.lunchat.com/becomeasponsor.html and reporters may inquire about getting invited to the event by clicking here http://www.lunchat.com/mediaregistration.html
