5. Blendtec

In the early days of YouTube, there was some interesting content floating around — cat videos, sketch videos, and, of course, a guy in a white lab coat blending a whole chicken and can of soda.

Tom Dickson, CEO of blender company Blendtec, saw early on that YouTube could be a great marketing tool. With the platform’s emphasis on funny and quick content, the infomercial series “Will It Blend?” was the result of a minimal marketing budget and an experiment.

The series was built around Blendtec’s flagship high-speed blender. To show the blender’s power, the CEO decided to advertise that users could even blend household items. So, he put on a white lab coat, found a box of matches, and turned on a camera.