Ebuzzing

Arguably, it’s been the event of the 2012. The Austrian, Felix Baumgartner, jumped from more than 39KM from space breaking the sound barrier, sponsored by the famous energy drinks brand. Millions of internet users watched the event live and once more Twitter records are staggering with almost 130,000 tweets about the jump in French, in Italian, in German, in English and in Spanish (between October 9^th - 16^th). In this buzz story, Ebuzzing looks back on this jump and its consequences for Red Bull in the media.

 

Buzz which has been in the making since 2010

The analysis of Red Bull's branding strategy within social media shows that this 'buzz' had been carefully prepared and built.

 

 

 

Red Bull began communicating about the jump since January 2010, then suspended its publications after a tweet in October, 29^th 2010 that announced the end of the project because of a lawsuit.

The brand then relaunched the project in 2012 and continued to publish information and news about the jump within social media. It even published several tweets a day for the couple of weeks before the event.

                                                                                                                                                                           
Twists and turns

The jump was initially planned for October 9th 2012 but due to bad weather was posponed until October 14th instead. This incident has been beneficial to Red Bull because it gave the opportunity to make people and media talk about the event even more and thus created an event full of drama which attracted maximum attention.

The media show, across the 5 countries we tracked was impressive – over 130,000 mentions on Twitter, 2,359 on blogs and 1, 798 within media.

 

What are the media consequences for Red Bull ?

During the same period, in the UK, the number of tweets reached more than 46,000 and touched more almost 84 million followers. There were 139 publications on blogs and 220 articles in media. The two waves appear clearly when we look at the number of articles published on blogs in the UK. Blogs played an important role in relaying information with a peak of 60 publications on October 15^th.

Below is one the most influential blogs, S hort Sharp Science, ranked 1^st in the science category by Ebuzzing, which published 4 articles about the event.

 

 

 

 

 

Evolution of the volume of publications talking about the jump on blogs

 

 

Thanks to the strategy and presence on Twitter, Red Bull achieved to be associated to more than half of tweets mentioning the event. This result is not so strong within media, with 18% mentioning the brand name. 

 

 

Earned media wins

The media equivalent in the UK is estimated to be more than €1.1 million that shows the campaign was a huge success.

By betting on the crazy dream of the parachutist Felix Baumgartner, Red Bull got worldwide media coverage and also highlighted it's association with extreme sports. And this is not over yet, as later on in the month, the BBC are planning a documentary about the adventure so watch this space for more...