So, after much fanfare, promotion, hullabaloo and then an aborted attempt, Felix Baumgartner - sky-diver extraordinaire - finally floated to the edge of space, and came crashing down to earth at supersonic pace, while the world watched.
Red Bull Stratos, as it came to be known, was a project devised to have the Austrian float to around 39 kilometres above the Earth, in a helium balloon. This distance essentially brought the veteran adrenaline junkie into the stratosphere, where he - almost nonchalantly - leaped from the relative safety of his carrier and plummeted to Earth, breaking the sound barrier on the way down, falling a total of 128, 100 feet. Incredibly, he fell for 4 minutes and 19 seconds before deploying his parachute.
Check out the video coverage:
The above video is obviously the heavily edited version, but has still managed to tally a whopping 18, 885, 740 views, 87,037 Likes and 2,654 Dislikes, since the event and upload six days ago. (Note: these numbers were recorded yesterday morning and may have increased since).
Such massive engagement would obviously be attributed to the incredible nature of the subject matter, but I think Red Bull, known for their promotion of the extreme and deft as they are at online video and the facets of hype and promotion therein, had a big part to play in making this event the momentous occasion it was, both online and otherwise. Something tells me a lesser brand may not have garnered these results, regardless of what the campaign was about.
What are good examples of businesses using video content that’s half the cost and hype, but that’s reaping the same colossal interaction? Share your thoughts in the ‘Make a comment’ block below.
