Using fun videos to market a B2B product: It works!

Today I got a fun email from a company that normally sends me a fairly dry email newsletter. The timing was perfect. Even though I’m primarily a copywriter, it’s my job to know about many aspects of marketing, especially up and coming trends. I’d been thinking on all the case studies and whitepapers I read about social networking that apply to B2C marketing, but was wondering how well the approach will work for B2B.

Then I get the “Can Water Cut It?” email from Flow International with a link to a video featuring Flow Man and asking the question “Can Water Cut a Titanium Golf Club?” Flow makes industrial strength water jets that can cut anything. See the video at http://www.canwatercutit.com. You can also watch them cut a cell phone and a blender.

The videos are tongue in cheek and deliberately amateurish and the approach works. I just watched them with my 10-year-old and her friend and they were impressed. But more importantly, the manufacturer with extreme cutting needs is going to be blown away watching these! And watch them he or she will because they are fun, not “work.” Compare cutting up a coworker’s annoying cell phone to watching a dry online demo!

As soon as I got the email, I contacted Doug at Flow. Doug said they started the videos after attending the Online Marketing Summit in Seattle (where I ran into Doug!). And the videos are working. Flow is starting slow with a gradual introduction but they’ve already gotten leads from the videos!

On the site they let people like us submit ideas for things to cut. And people are! Doug says, “We've already received a bundle of interesting ideas on what people would like to see cut (for example, plasma TVs to laptops to boulders to bread).”

Just this morning I read an article about integrating email and social media. Flow’s “Can Water Cut It?” videos are a perfect example of doing just that.

Kudos to Flow for figuring out how to harness social networking and video for marketing an industrial product in a B2B marketplace!

OK, back to copywriting on a rainy Seattle afternoon…