A clash of broadcasting worlds

Did you watch Felix Baumgartner's record breaking jump yesterday? It was amazing.

Watching live on the Red Bull branded wesite at www.redbullstratos.com, I thought we could be seeing a new era in live broadcasting. After all, if you own the content, then why get somebody else to broadcast it for you? Run your own station, for as long as you need it, on the web.

Why would Neil Armstrong's moon landing be broadcast on TV in an era of live streaming?

There is a very good reason.

Red Bull's stream (via YouTube) attracted an audience of eight million. That would be very impressive if it was a UK audience, but it isn't. It's a global audience.

Eight million globally is, frankly, a bit crap. It's a YouTube record, but that's not the point. ITV were showing an hour long Coronation Street special at the same time as Felix was hoping he'd packed his 'chute properly and that did 6.25m, just in the UK.

So why do you want a regular TV broadcaster for your content? Simple. Audience reach. It's the same reason advertisers want TV ads, even if they've truly bought into social media.

I'm assuming one of two things happened with Red Bull Stratos. Either Google bunged Red Bull some fairly serious cash for the exclusive rights to Live stream via YouTube, or regular broadcasters just weren't interested, because they couldn't be given a predictable prime-time slot when the jump would take place. "Sometime in the next week if the weather's ok" doesn't really work for an ITV scheduler.

In one (fabulous) event, we've got the best and worst of new and old media. Only old media could have got that footage in front of its true potential audience. But TV is too inflexible to make the scheduling work for an event as unpredictable as the Stratos project.

In the UK at least, it's a shame we didn't have a dedicated digital TV channel that could be activated on short notice and then trailed on a major network. Press the red button to watch a nutter jump from space. The technology is there and it worked really well during the olympics. For a moon landing type event (Mars landing?) in 2012, I'm betting that's what would happen.

Unfortunately, the broadcaster with that capability is the BBC. With Red Bull logos everywhere? Never going to happen.

We're not quite living in the future yet. If you missed the footage yesterday because you didn't have one eye on Twitter, then here's the Austrian with the big cahones in all his high altitude parachutey glory. Enjoy.

Creating Events

Lesson two of Red Bull's lessons in youth marketing.

"Create, don't sponsor events."

Forget youth marketing, that's a great thought, full stop. I love Red Bull's marketing (can't stand the drink, but that's not the point.) With £272m per year to play with globally, you could buy a hell of a lot of TV spots, or you could set yourself apart and buy a Formula 1 team, invent the Flugtag and the Air Race and create something really special.

This is how you 'do' word of mouth. Start by creating something that people will want to talk about, then make it easy to get content about it. Contrast what Red Bull do with the 'people are talking on Twitter, what can we do to get them to talk about us on Twitter?' approach. Forget Twitter, if people want to talk about you then they'll talk in all sorts of places and one of them will be Twitter.

Now make it easy to get the content. People will find you. You're going to need a Twitter page, but as a response to people talking, not as a seed.


I'm very, very excited this week because the Red Bull X-Alps started on Sunday. It's an 818km race across the Alps, on foot and by paraglider that means, right now, thirty incredibly fit and skilled people are trying to be the first to get to Monaco. You've got to carry your kit or fly it and there are no stages. Sleep at night if you like, but somebody else will be running.



The X-Alps is much smaller than Formula 1 or the Air Race, but a community of enthusiasts is absolutely buzzing. On Facebook, on Twitter and [shock horror] in real life. Don't talk to me until the end of next week unless you want to hear about the race... (sorry everybody*)

The Twitter bit is easy and cheap. If you're not going to put this level of effort into your viral campaigns, then lets be honest, what's the point? Spend whatever budget you've got on TV spots, lets stop pretending you've got something people are interested in talking about and I'm off to see how far Chrigel Maurer went today.


* After the race, I'll go back to just boring everybody about normal paragliding, promise.