Guest post that I wrote for Mashable, see the entire post here: http://mashable.com/2008/05/22/social-media-marketing-primer/

Before “Will It Blend,” Blendtec was a faceless company that manufactured blenders; their consumer grade blenders run around $400. The Will It Blend story begins shortly after George began working for the company. He was walking around the factory and stumbled upon Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson. Dickson was testing the new bearings in a blender by blending a 2 X4. The company’s employees went on with their work unphased, apparently the practice of “extreme blending” was a regular occurrence there at the factory.