Red Bull Media House opens its doors to brand partners
Stephen Whiteside
Warc
A can of Red Bull promises to deliver an instant energy boost – and most marketers would welcome the type of engagement kick that the Austrian beverage delivers across TV, print, gaming, and digital video.
Responsibility for producing and distributing the mass of material generated by Red Bull – which, as a rule, is lightly branded and covers everything from alpine sports and music festivals to adventure travel – rests with Red Bull Media House, a standalone business founded in 2008. Today, this enterprise employs 1,000 people in its home country, the UK, and US. And its global footprint is wide, spanning over 500 commercial partnerships.
Red Bull Media House, in fact, presents wide opportunities for other brands to bask in its namesake's content halo. "What is probably new and worth noting is that we are now engaging – large-scale – in sponsorship and in brand partnerships," Alexander Koppel, its chief commercial officer, told delegates at IEG's 2015 Sponsorship conference in Chicago.
"We're allowing third parties to access a very engaged audience – and what I believe is a very attractive target group."
Case in point: "Open All Winter", an effort seeking to champion the outdoor apparel range manufactured by adidas that went live in November 2014. It represented the first campaign by a third-party brand on Red Bull Media House's digital properties; the narrative was based around inspirational stories from well-known figures in snowboarding, motorsports, mountain climbing and similarly challenging endeavours.
More specifically, adidas leveraged redbull.com and the youtube.com/redbull, deploying a mix of bespoke native advertising content alongside banner, display, and pre-roll ads. This output was distributed globally, with targeting applied in certain regions – a strategy in large part reflecting the international clout of Red Bull's beverages arm.
"Times have changed. In today's world: we're competing for audience and we're competing for advertisers at the same time," Koppel said. "We are a truly global company, built on the backbone of a phenomenal organisation in 67 countries.
"Let's be honest: without that scale, we couldn't run the business," he continued. "It is well-integrated. And I think this is making us unique: it is offering and allowing you as a client – [or] as a potential client, or us as a Media House – to access these phenomenal resources. And, at the same time, it definitely creates the powerbase to launch new products and come up with new ideas."
Beyond its geographical scope, Red Bull Media House's pitch to external marketers depends on the bonds its parent brand has forged with competitors and communities in fields such as exploration, sports and music – an investment of money and manpower that would be extremely costly and time-consuming to replicate. Rather than start from scratch, firms like adidas can thus exploit a ready-made source of expertise and engagement.
"It was enough, in the old days, to understand the audience. Today, you have to be part of the audience," said Koppel. "We spend a lot of time to try to really understand our core audiences, our core communities; spend a lot of time understanding their emotional needs, their demands… We're connecting these core communities globally in many [cases].
"We are building on the foundations of our beverage business, and we have the benefit of having 67 country organisations which support the Red Bull Media House and its doings. We have a great communications and marketing network which activate our product," he added. "We're living in a globalised world; media is changing dramatically … It needs to be a global exercise if you want to engage in the way that we do."
Another organisation that has sought to tap into Red Bull's combined strengths is Nokia, the telecoms group owned by Microsoft. In an attempt to emphasise the image quality of the camera on its Lumia smartphones, the handset maker is working with Red Bull Photography – a division of the Media House – on a program where various renowned photographers utilise this device when shooting in eye-catching locations.
The talent mix has included Ray Demski and ice-climbing expert Alex Luger exploring the Lyngen Alps in Norway and the Arctic Circle; Michael Clark accompanying sea kayakers to Vancouver Island; Predrag Vuckovic snapping BMX riders in Serbia; Craig Kolesky photographing skateboarder Loucas Polydorou in Cape Town; and Marcel Lämmerhirt illustrating the problem of disappearing glaciers in the Swiss mountains. Each one is true to the promise of the Red Bull brand. And, in each case, Nokia is able to tap into that good will
But whatever type of partner and media is involved, Red Bull Media House has a consistent overall brief. "Our focus is to compete for audience and advertisers and create phenomenal storytelling," Koppel said. "We are great storytellers. That's the position we're trying to take. So we naturally find it easy to work with brands who also engage in storytelling."
Such storytelling has been continually finessed on in-house content assets like the Red Bull Air Race (a flying tournament), X-Fighters (a freestyle motorcross series) and the Crushed Ice (downhill skating contests). "They are spectacular events, and they deserve and demand a special way of treatment: the go-to-market is different, and I think with our capacity in-house, we can serve our internal client much better," said Koppel.
Although many brands are enhancing their in-house marketing capabilities, few have taken as thoroughgoing an approach as Red Bull. One exception to that rule: camera manufacturer GoPro, which has introduced a channel for distributing branded and user-generated content via outlets including Microsoft's Xbox games console, as well as streaming platform Roku and air carrier Virgin America.
Given that GoPro is involved heavily in extreme sports, in another marketing era it might have been seen as a rival to Red Bull Media House. Instead, the latter company has embraced the former: Go-Pro's durable, lightweight devices – not to mention the high-quality video and stills that bring capture adverse conditions -are an ideal mix for the adventure that is so much a part of the Red Bull brand DNA.
"GoPro is a fantastic partner for us, because the product allows storytelling on a different level in a new dimension," said Koppel. "It doesn't mean only that we do technology partnerships; there is media and advertising on top of it."
Indeed, GoPro has sponsored Red Bull's Signature Series – broadcast on NBC and zeroing in on disciplines like snowboarding, mountain biking and surfing – since 2013. The two also work together in the Red Bull Global RallyCross, the off-road racing competition, where GoPro's equipment can supply a truly unique perspective, to the mutual benefit of both brands.
"We try to be authentic in everything we do and we apply a very high level of quality to everything we do … It's living up to the values of Red Bull: we really try to be focused on doing the right things and I think we're really good at that," said Koppel.
Affiliations with players like GoPro thus also help Red Bull Media House hit its corporate targets, which, according to Koppel, match those of every enterprise active in its space. "It's audience. It's revenue – direct or indirect. That's the impact we want to create and the commercial success we want to take away from it," he told the IEG assembly.
Meeting those goals, in turn, will shift more cans of the company's energy drinks and encourage others to follow in the footsteps of adidas, Nokia and GoPro. "What we find is that it's phenomenal for us to have the opportunity to create products which are strong enough to live up to local competition," Koppel asserted.
"If it's successful, it not only adds value to our own doings: it also represents potential value to clients and third parties to come on board."
Stephen Whiteside is Warc's Reports Editor.
