Everybody should have a Vitamix

Scope

Three-year agency of record for the Vitamix 5200, covering national media relations, a nationwide editor seeding and demo program, athlete and chef ambassador campaigns, and the “Pitch Me!” consumer video contest.

Challenge

Vitamix arrived with a perception problem rather than a product problem. It was a category-defining machine known largely through infomercials, priced at several times a conventional blender.

That combination is fatal in a pitch. Editors had to believe the machine justified both the money and the counter space, and business reporters had to be moved past the infomercial framing to the company underneath it. Neither could be argued. Both had to be demonstrated.

What we did

So Crier stopped describing the machine and started delivering it. We ran an ongoing seeding and deskside demo operation across the national food press, putting 5200s in front of test kitchen directors, equipment editors and food columnists at the Associated Press, The New York Times, Cook’s Illustrated, Real Simple and Men’s Health, and entered it into head-to-head appliance tests where the comparison would be made on performance.

Ambassador storytelling through endurance athletes Marshall Ulrich and Charlie Engle and NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez reached sports and health desks the food beat could not.

And we pitched the company as a family-owned American manufacturer. On learning its founder was credited with launching the first TV infomercial in 1949, we turned the liability into the campaign: “Pitch Me!”, a consumer video contest to find the brand’s next crowdsourced infomercial host.

Results

More than 270 placements between 2007 and 2010, with 2008 alone delivering 312.6M impressions and $2.9M in PR value.

The head-to-head tests paid off exactly as intended. Consumer Reports gave the 5200 the highest score in its category and Maxim’s Torture Test chose it as Editor’s Pick over Blendtec and Breville. An Associated Press review syndicated to more than twenty-five daily newspapers, business coverage ran in Forbes, Fortune and Inc., and the story reached five CNN Headline News segments and a CNBC Power Lunch “Made in America” feature. “Pitch Me!” added 199.7M impressions of its own.

What seeding buys you

The demo program produced the asset no budget can purchase: chefs using the machine on air because they wanted to.

The Martha Stewart Show featured the 5200 alongside Mario Batali, Eric Ripert and Wyclef Jean, with Martha telling her audience the line at the top of this page. Michael Symon used it across episodes of Cook Like an Iron Chef, and Alton Brown called it “the finest on the planet” in Gizmodo.

That is what a demo program buys. The machine stops being a pitch and becomes a preference.