The Man with the Wings!

September 16th, 2013 • COMM464, EMarketing

Think Red Bull and undoubtedly the first thing that comes to my mind is the experience of having instant caffeine rush  in the midst of yet another all nighter before an accounting exam.

But the thought/ image that comes a close second is a pair of wings and Felix Baumgartner. Red Bull is a much adored brand in the beverage world and a marketer’s favourite in the ad world. In this blog post, I am going to focus on specifically the spectacular success that the Red Bull Brand has had with its tie up with the skydiver Baumgartner  for his 2012 sky diving record.

Some numbers first: the live webcast of the jump has 52 million views (the most of any live webcast in history), there were 280 digital partners and 80 TV stations in 50 countries showed this feat! While the actual cost of the whole endeavour is not disclosed, a report in this article mentions that just the balloon that took Baumgartner to his ascent cost $70000! However, Red Bull has a lot of prior experience in the realm of extreme sports such as Red Bull Racing and hence, it is possible that the total cost may not be too outlandish.

So was this cost all worth it? In other words, what was the ROI of this marketing endeavour, especially in the online social media space? Erica Buckley in “The Business Return from Social Media” talks about measuring the success  by first realising where the start point is and then checking what the magnitude of the change is.  In this case, let’s measure success by the increase in revenue that Red Bull earned. The success of this elaborate marketing strategy is beyond imaginable: After the Red Bull Stratos (which was what this endeavour was called), tough-to-penetrate markets such as Japan and India opened up. Sales in the US too went up by 7% to 1.6 billion in the 6 months after Red Bull Stratos. Moreover, markets as varied as South Africa,Japan and Germany saw double digit sales and this testifies to the global reach that this brand now enjoys.

It is important to note here that all this success earned was not just due to paid media and owned media (such as the company’s social media pages and website) but also due to the abundance of earned media that it enjoyed be it in terms of the newspaper and TV coverage and free word of mouth publicity. It is also curious to note that the event, whenever mentioned, was always mentioned in full and not just as “Stratos” and this advantaged Red bull greatly.

I believe this fantastic success is a result of Red Bull’s marketing team headed by Arun Hozack (Red Bull VP North America) following the strategies essential to social media implementation according to Buckley. First, as per this article, the team focused on defining the objectives and then they placed metrics on top of these objectives. An early player in the social media space, Red Bull has always treated social media not as a siloed marketing tool but as an integral part of its strategy and hence, it enjoys this success today while others struggle to find their way in the vast expanse of social media.