Red Bull's Invisible Marketing

when I watch felix baumgartner jump from the edge of space my jaw hit the floor he takes a balloon ride to the stratosphere jumps breaks the sound barrier on the way down and nails the landing it's a fascinating gripping spectacle but I want to talk about something today it was perhaps not as obvious read will spent 65 million dollars to help felix jump from space and not one can of redbull ever appeared on film why i love advertising for the art of it behind that ad you probably skipped before this video was thousands of human hours and millions of dollars all purpose to sell to human minds that are calloused after watching hundreds of ads every day how do you stand out amidst a sea of product placements jingles and sales pitches every company has their own strategy and brand identity a few examples we've actually talked about here on the channel mall bro they try to sell an identity app tries to sell sex of course Apple tries to sell status and an experience but the one thing they all have in common is that they all sell when everything said and done they all put out their product on display to eventually try to sell to you to remind you that hey we have this new shoe or phone or whatever everyone except Red Bull this is what for me made the strattice jump so remarkable the video ended without a single Red Bull can in shot not in the short one-minute version not in the 4-minute cut their brand is Red Bull gives you wings I mean you couldn't ask for a better product placement Felix is practically Icarus incarnate goes from the sky your product gives him wings and he lands and never does he pull out the product and just take a dream if you are thinking like an advertiser this is mind blowing it doesn't make sense but I think that's maybe the point Red Bull fundamentally thinks about stories and advertising differently than almost every other company I know I think Red Bull knows that if they had handed Felix a Red Bull ken right after he had just risked his life for one of the most daring human stunts ever it would have cheapened it it would have taken away something from the grit that would have all sort of faded into the background and to show you exactly what I mean I want you to take a look at this mark slate technically stepdad but really I did this is my wonderful stepdad Randy it feels like he's been around forever this is a Budweiser app which is a tribute to stepfathers who made a difference in their kids lives on Father's Day and it is content advertising similar to the Red Bull Chum Budweiser is attempting to attach its name to a compelling story in order to further bolster their brand name and goodwill but as the viewer it's hard to fully buy into it because Budweiser takes great pains to do the traditional thing show the product when they do that as a viewer you kind of remember oh yeah this is just a beer company trying to sell to me Budweiser becomes the story in the heartwarming moment of a child asking their stepfather to adopt them becomes the background or at least it's fair to say that Budweiser isn't exactly subtle this is kind of a part of this that you didn't really know I wanted to actually ask you to like legally adopt me because there's nothing wrong with sad of course but in the end it feels like a commercial and some of that goodwill vanishes which is the central difference between Red Bull and so many other advertisers Red Bulls content doesn't feel like a commercial by design they are the content itself and they want to keep it that way which is why when there's a conflict between the story and the product they focus on the story this isn't to say Red Bull never shows their product sometimes they do find ways to fit it in but more often than not you'll see restraint take for instance imagine it one of their biggest videos ever Danny MacAskill as a kid imagining himself one day to be a successful pro writer now ask yourself does it make any sense for this kid to be imagining a Red Bull energy drink no so they leave it up they realize it wouldn't make any sense within the story so they once again put the story first and 41 million views later it's hard to tell do we classify this as advertising the product is an insight there's only a logo on a helmet so it's hard to say in some times because Red Bull so consistently blurs the line between advertising and content it feels like Red Bull is only trying to sell energy drinks to fuel their insane sports media production company not the other way around and yet despite this seeming indifference to the actual product the massive attention their brand gets still drive sales after Felix's jump Red Bull sales went up 7 percent which translates to hundreds of millions of dollars proving that sometimes when you make great content you don't need to show your product sometimes you need to get out of the way and let the content speak for itself and now it's finally time to address everything that's going back around here we have a brand new set and you also might be asking yourself why is the disembodied voice talking to me with the face now fair question we'll get to that as well but first I want to talk to you about our sponsor today because Felix Baumgartner is not the only one with a cool sponsor today we have expressvpn now I know you're all asking yourself Steven are you going to space for expressvpn and also doing a death-defying jump I'm working up to that okay we're working or work we're moving the bar towards that right now it's kind of at the why don't you just do the ad read okay dance monkey no I'm just kidding the expressvpn people are very lovely and they're part of what makes this channel possible I go to coffee shops all the time to write because I'm addicted to caffeine and I enjoy just sitting quietly with a bunch of other strangers and never communicating with them but when you do that you run in to the all-too-familiar problem of really bad unencrypted Wi-Fi where your public information is available for anyone to see look at and steal and so for me that just isn't an option which is why I trust expressvpn to protect my data they're the number one VPN according to tech radar and they are the fastest VPN but what's most important to me is that it's easy to use I'm now I'm just gonna show you how I use it I'm actually connected right now I'll just unconnect and then I'll just reconnect right here and within about 2 or 3 seconds I'm connected so if you find yourself at coffee shops a lot if you find yourself as a student or you're traveling abroad anywhere you need to secure your data secure it with expressvpn and to find out how you can support the show and how you can get three months free go to expressvpn dot-com slash coffee break that's expressvpn dot-com slash coffee break there's a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can try it out see how it fits your life I'm confident you will enjoy it as much as I do thank you to expressvpn for sponsoring this video and now let's address the studio yes guys we've kind of changed things a lot bringing more of the production in-house having more of a personal connection with you not just being a disembodied voice anyway this is something I want to do for a while I think it's a real opportunity to change up the format to do new things and I hope you'll come with me on this journey we have some really great videos coming up I can't wait to show them and share them with you but I just wanted to tell you that yes things are changing but in a lot of ways the content is staying the same and I think each and every one of you for supporting us to get this far and we're only gonna take the channel farther so I'm really excited with what the future brings and yeah thank you guys for watching and I will see you next time

Channel: Coffee Break

Views: 97,103

Rating: 4.8902597 out of 5

Keywords: Coffee Break, Video Essay, Red Bull, Marketing, invisible marketing, advertising, stratos jump, felix baumgartner, space jump, stratosphere, Danny Mackaskill, content advertising, influencer marketing, advertising analysis, monster, ad age, advertising secrets

Id: Vussgc-oeXk

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 19 2019