A longstanding trailblazer in the realm of content marketing (think full throttle action sports videos and a freefall space jump stunt) – Red Bull has surpassed itself with its recent effort.
Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) is a month-long music festival featuring lectures, concerts, and workshops set in a dedicated space. Last year, it was held in the capital of cool, New York City. Granted, the incredible sounds of homegrown new musical talent presented a vast resource of inspiration for content – but Red Bull took content marketing to dizzying new heights. Not only were the content efforts around RBMA a stellar example of getting brand marketing right, each piece is an inspiring and informative nugget for musos, culture junkies and plain old hipsters. So, what key learnings can smaller businesses take away from Red Bull’s content masterpiece?:
1. Keep brand principles front of mind
Your overarching brand principles should always be the glue that binds the content together, irrelevant of platform. For Red Bull, this was a no-brainer, since RBMA is serious about offering a platform to showcase up-and-coming unknown artists. In cheesier terms (that aren’t usually heard outside of the organisation), the ethos is cultural engagement through ‘giving wings to people and ideas’. Define your brand principles before embarking on anything content-related for your organisation.
2. Create something that people actually want
Because of financial constraints, budget issues or downright laziness, not everybody will be producing excellent content. Today’s sophisticated audience, however, will quickly become wise to brands that are churning out the same old tired stats and stories…so offer something credible and fresh.
Your target audience will usually be seeking something very specific. Determine precisely what this is, and serve it up with gusto. Use the dearth of quality, insightful content on your given niche to your advantage, by creating the definitive go-to source of information. As Red Bull did, try to “stand for certain values that maybe aren’t out there anymore because of the way the world is structured” – in their case, by commissioning a six-page article on Brian Eno’s New York years.
3. Design content that is easily shared
Rather than take the predictable, bog-standard approach of merely putting out videos of its lectures and events on YouTube, Red Bull briefed a video content specialist to produce off-centre animated shorts that really transcended pop culture.
Short films are ideal bitsize nuggets that people want to snack on and pass around. “All the content we set out to make is incredibly viable, catchy and shareable,” Red Bull declared.
Remember, short is sweet – and while sequential content is great for telling a tale, each piece of content should be a definitive standalone entity in its own right.
4. Prioritise your production efforts
In the case of the Red Bull Music Academy, the content team was faced with a phenomenal amount of film (20 hours a day) to work from. Efficiency is a much-needed skill when it comes to mass producing content. Red Bull’s tip is to keep the objectives and intentions of the content front of mind, always being mindful that content marketing is a very different beast to the finely crafted art of advertising.
5. Trust your production partners
Efficiency was clearly vital to the success of Red Bull Music Academy’s content production. But equally important was the brand’s approach to empowering its production partners. So while Red Bull outsourced production, it also allowed its partner to get on and make content with relatively little supervision (although the 18-person production team sat within Red Bull’s dedicated content unit department). While this may well be a larger-scale operation than you’re faced with, the principle of briefing production partners and then empowering them to go away and do their best work applies to smaller businesses too.
If you’re keen to take a look at some of the content output from the Red Bull Music Academy, take a look at these beautifully observed docus on the New York music scene:
And download the festival’s remarkably great daily newspaper, The Daily Note
