Yesterday Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier after skydiving from 38 km above the earth. While Felix was heading towards the ground, the stunt drew another record: YouTube recorded that more than 8 million people worldwide tuned in to the live stream. More than 40 TV stations broadcasted live from the event and several media live-blogged. After he landed, Red Bull posted a picture of Baumgartner on his knees on the ground to Facebook, generating nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and more than 29,000 shares in less than 40 minutes.  On Twitter, half the worldwide trending topics had something to do with the jump.

Red Bull, who sponsored the daring venture, managed to transform the event in to “breaking news”. Even before it was confirmed that the jump was going to be a reality, the stunt largely circulated on social media. Red Bull identified an audience and provided information and relevant content to the viewers through multiple channels, including redbull.com, Twitter, Facebook and offline briefing sessions with media. The stunt emphasizes not just Red Bull as a brand associated with action and adrenaline rush, as it is widely known for, it furthermore gives Red Bull the predicate of being a global brand. Felix, a human being like you and me, was literally looking down on earth ready to put it to the test while the whole world was watching. Now that takes power and adrenalin to another level.

The flying Felix is an example of how marketing has reached new heights. According to several marketing experts, including Christian Strand, innovation director at media agency IUM, this is a prime example of future media stunt  and certainly something we are going to see more often.

The conversation on social media is not silenced yet and several bids on the advertising value can already be identified throughout the web. One advertising executive guessed the exposure could be worth £10m in the UK and as much as £100m worldwide.

When looking through articles and blogposts I find it interesting that several points out the low level of consequences related to brandvalue for Red Bull if the experiment had went wrong. This made me think of marketing as a conceptual tool. How far can we take “extreme” marketing? Are there simply no limits in the fight for profit?

In this light, Red Bull is certainly defining what “experimental marketing” is all about. After the event yesterday this type of marketing could just as well be named “Red Bull marketing”. Red Bull is by far in the front seat.

On the 6^th of November the American people will decide who will win the 57^th presidential election. The U.S. election will be largely fought on the web and social media represents a heavier part of the U.S. presidential election than ever before.

During the past couple of years political actors have become far more sophisticated in their use of social media and this applies to the whole range from communications to and with the voters to attempts of collecting money for campaigns. 90 percent of all senators and members of congress are on Twitter and/or Facebook  and both Republicans and Democrats use “data mining”, which through careful monitoring and analysis of consumer behavior ensures that the campaigns “micro-customize” messages to voters, according to what they are searching for on Google, and what they have in their “digital basket”. As an example campaign strategists try to customize the emails they send out with their message to potential voters. A housewife with children will therefore get a different message than the working mother.

Although both parties are in the race, it seems like democrats remain in the front position in the digital arena. According to a new survey by “Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism”, the Obama campaign uses social media four times more often than the Romney campaign does. The Romney campaign tweeted once a day in June, while the Obama campaign tweeted 29 times. The Democratic candidate also had twice as many blog entries on its website and more than twice as many YouTube videos compared to Romney.

When it comes to the battlefield, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are well represented. According to a report from eMarketer Twitter’s growth is twice as big as Facebook but there is still some way to go. Twitter has only about 24 million active U.S. users, while Facebook has almost 133 million. In addition YouTube is widely used for posting videos, speeches and campaigns.

With social media as a relatively new arena, it is interesting to follow this election. In the end there could be a link between how well the two candidates perform in social media and the final outcome in early November.

“Remember playing on people’s emotions, do not over-advertise, make your campaign easy to share and give users that something extra”. Heard those guidelines before?

A quick search on Google will highlight the multitude of online guides advising strategies on viral marketing. “This Is How You Make Something Go Viral: An Impractical Guide” and ”How to Improve Your Chances of Going Viral: 11 steps – wikiHow” are just two examples.

But can your message actually go viral? Yes it can.

The proper question is whether you can construct and implement certain measures that raise the chances for viral success. Can you actually create viral marketing or is it just a random beneficial effect that can happen if you’re lucky? A clear answer is hard to find.

From my search on Google I found that a positivist tone was widespread in many of the articles acknowledging viral success. These articles’ approach to viral marketing includes quantitative answers for the users. When looking at the more skeptical articles, it’s obvious that it’s just not that simple. If viral marketing is defined as “content passed from one person to another, including images, videos, links, applications, games, stories, emails, documents or virtually any other type of digital content that one person passes to another”, it’s obvious that you can’t actively make your message go viral. According to blogger B.L. Ochman, who argues against viral marketing as a conscious effort, viral marketing is about timing and well-fitted content appealing to your target audience. That said you could try to be creative and original and thereby maybe improve your changes of making your message go viral.

Examples of successful viral marketing:

Thai Health Promotion Foundation – Smoking Kid

“People are calling it the most effective anti-smoking ad ever.”

Instead of telling people that smoking is bad, this new ad from Thailand uses little kids to trick smokers into saying how bad the habit really is.

Coca-Cola Happiness Machine

Coca-Cola’s Happiness Machine video was launched on January 12 and topped a million views two weeks later based solely on people sharing the video through Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and word-of-mouth.