24/10/2016

King Of Content Red Bull Racing Leverages US Grand Prix With Long Form ‘F1 Pit Stop’ Documentary

Launched to leverage interest around the US Grand Prix, 19 October saw Red Bull F1 launch a pit-stop led content marketing campaign spearheaded by a flagship documentary on Red Bull TV called ‘The History of the Pit Stop: Gone in 2 Seconds’.

 

The timing of the initiative roll-out also celebrated the team’s world record pit-stop time, when Red Bull F1 turned round Mark Weber’s car in just 1.923 seconds, at the 2014 United States Grand Prix – the first ever pit stop to break the two-second barrier.

 

This long-form documentary looks back across 65 years of F1 pit-stops: it explores teamwork, technology, practice and precision and features F1 luminaries ranging from John Surtees, Gordon Murray and Gerhard Berger, to Jos Verstappen and Mark Webber.

 

Spanning right across the team’s digital and social channels, as well as physical and experiential strands, the content marketing initiative was first teased on Red Bull Racing’s YouTube channel with a short trailer spot (that itself generated 20,000 views) initially released on 18 October.

 

 

The trail phase was further supported, pre-premiere on Red Bull’s digital and social platforms like Twitter,

 

 

 

 

and Facebook.

 

All creative executions and content assets drove viewers towards Red Bull TV to watch the full documentary at http://win.gs/HistoryPitStop.

 

In fact, right through the US Grand Prix race week, the Red Bull Racing F1 team celebrated the art of the pit stop through various activation phases linked with the campaign-specific #GoneIn2Seconds and the wider Red Bull Racing #FasterTogether hashtags.

 

These ranged from a ‘Pit Stop Experience’ video,

 

 

 

to a strand featuring pro skateboard Ryan Sheckler @RyanSheckler

 

 

Another aspect of the documentary promotional campaign was a set of ‘1.92 second’ challenges posed to the team’s two drivers

 

 

: these included ‘Puzzle’,

 

 

 

‘Ping Pong’,

 

 

 

‘Balloons’,

 

 

 

‘Marshmallows’,

 

 

‘Cupping’,

 

 

 

and, somewhat inevitably, ‘Give You Wings’,

 

 

 

This isn’t actually the first time Red Bull racing has launched a content campaign built around pit stops: back in summer 2013 it rolled out a smaller scale initiative called ‘The Art Of Pit Stop’.

 

 

Comment

 

Now a marketing discipline in its own right, Red Bull has long been the king of content marketing and, in fact, the whole automotive sector has been at the forefront of this strategy.

 

Car companies have a strong heritage of content marketing and brand films: indeed, the same week that Red Bull rolled out its ‘History Of The Pit Stop’ documentary, content marketing pioneer BMW returned to its BMW Films (http://bmwfilms.com/) marketing strategy that first began 15 years ago with 2001’s eight short film online series called ‘The Hire’ series.

 

 

 

 

Mid October 2016 saw the German premium car company revive the approach with the launch of ‘The Escape’.

 

 

Plus, in 2014, BMW also activated its USA Olympic team sponsorship with a full length documentary film screened on NBC about bobsledding called ‘Driving On Ice’ (see case study).

 

These campaigns have also helped reignite the industry debate around the definition, effectiveness,  returns and overall successes of cross-platform content marketing as a strategy.

 

Interestingly, the CMA’s latest report on measurement finds that only 50% of marketers believe it is possible to accurately measure the ROI of content marketing, while 73% of senior level marketers class measurement as ‘very important’ to their content marketing strategy with half dedicating between 6% and 15% of their marketing budget to it.

 

Yet 52% of marketers say they are ‘unsure whether a universal metric for content marketing can be achieved’ and 29% are concerned that budgets will be moved from harder to measure channels if measurement is not made a priority.

 

Red Bull is clearly a brand that continues to be convinced and continues to lead the content marketing charge.

 

In fact, the ‘Pit Stop’ campaign wasn’t the only Red Bull marketing initiative at the 2016 US Grand Prix as in mid October it also ran the lower key ‘F1 Press Conference Bingo’ game (see case study).

 

Links

 

Red Bull TV:

http://www.redbull.tv/film/AP-1P6BWQ9JS1W11/the-history-of-the-pit-stop

 

Red Bull Racing Website
http://www.redbullracing.com

 

Red Bull Racing YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/redbullracing

 

Red Bull Racing Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/redbullracing/

 

Red Bull Racing Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/redbullracing

 

Red Bull Twitter:

https://twitter.com/RedBullUK

 

Red Bull Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/redbull

 

Red Bull Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/redbull/

 

Red Bull YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/user/redbull

 

Red Bull Racing Website:

http://www.redbullracing.com/

 

Red Bull Racing Twitter:

https://twitter.com/redbullracing

@redbullracing



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