I saw this yesterday morning on CBS Sunday Morning news show.  They were talking about the Youtube awards.  The story was an amalgamation of a couple of posts I've done here: 21st Century Jobs and this post here: Viral Advertising As Content

In the story they interview the guys that created LonelyGirl15 and also "Dancing" Matt Harding and then they interview Tom Dixon from BlendTec.

Blendtec is a commercial blender company trying to sell their products into the consumer market.  At the urging of a marketing (and I assume younger) employee they've been running a video series on youtube called "Will it Blend".  It now has its own website WillItBlend.com.

The key question is what impact did the Youtube posting have on sales.  The first piece of information that came out in the interview is that the video series has had in excess of 6 million views.  Can you say wow.

The interviewer then asks how has it impacted Blendtec's bottom line.  Tom Dickson, the inventor and CEO of BlendTec, says "Yes absolutely! ... thousands of percent more."

...and they did this essentially for FREE!

Well as compared to any old school media format, it's essentially Free.  Extraordinary.

Here's the CBS report (on youtube...heh...how long it will stay there I don't know)

It's also over at the CBS Sunday Morning home page [bottom right] for now: CBS Sunday Morning