In this week’s blog post, I am going to review the viral marketing video “Imaginate” by Danny Macaskill, and it’s ability to influence young action sports enthusiast. Viral marketing is the creation of captivating content that promotes consumer awareness and online sharing, in order to increase consumers’ engagement with a company or brand. Content relates to popular videos, commercials, blog posts, and any other online communications device that persuades consumers to spread the message and interact with the company directly.

Viral videos are one of the most persuasive viral marketing techniques used to attract attention toward a company because they are widely spread on the Internet and reach a large population. One of Red Bulls most recent viral successes was their short film series Danny MacAskill’s Imaginate[1]. The video turned into a viral marketing success, being shared over 10 million times on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.  Along the video, Red Bull’s website hosted a series interviews with the athlete, where he answered questions submitted by fans on Reddit.com.[2]

By using real athletes to perform essentially unreal tricks, Red Bull takes habitual human actions such as riding a bike and turns them into a thrilling experience. Red Bull is the best at innovating action sports, and in doing so, creates a brand personality that is clearly more favorable and unique than its competitors. This helps to create an interdependent relationship between caffeine users and Red Bull products. The Red Bull brand personality is hip, unique, and trendy largely due to their success with action sports online marketing.

Many Millennials today, drink Red Bull because the companies success with viral marketing and their ability to outperform the competition. Innovation is a key component in action sports industry and the main criteria of developing the next greatest video. Red Bull is at the forefront because their athlete’s aggressive persona. This post is successful because of its creative content and engaging material. After watching this video I could not help but be amazed, so it is no wonder why this video and many others created by Red Bull are constantly shared and reviewed.