Who was taking the biggest risk?

Ok, so he jumped from a height of 39 km (24 miles) and he’s travelled faster than the speed of sound but surely Red Bull was taking more of a risk than Felix Baumgartner.

If you were like me and were one of the millions around the world who last night watched the inspirational (or some would say mad) Austrian break world records by parachuting from the edge of space then I think the risk was surely with Felix.

As I watched it I was so impressed. Not only by the bravery of Felix but also the technology that allowed people around the world to watch live footage from the edge of space.

If you look at some business concepts around the event though there are a couple that spring to mind.

First of all, whilst it turned out to be a huge success for the sponsors Red Bull, if there had been some problems for poor Felix and he didn’t make it back to earth in one piece the negative publicity would have been pretty bad (admittedly not as bad a feeling for Red Bull compared to what Felix would have felt but still pretty bad none the less).

The business risk of undertaking such a stunt by Red Bull would no doubt have been reviewed in detail and numerous precautions put in place. One simple precaution was that the live footage was in fact with a 20 second delay so that in the unfortunate event of something going dramatically wrong, the live feed could be cut before millions around the world saw Felix explode into thousands of small pieces live on TV.

Red Bull is an energy drink that has a brand image of “speed and adventure” and have sponsored numerous events such as aerobatic flying and extreme mountain biking. This was their most ambitious event yet though and its success has been reported as being equivalent to £100 million of advertising spend.

In other words, the publicity that Red Bull got from the event was equivalent to them spending £100 million on advertising.

The second business issue that occurred to me was that I saw the event live on YouTube and I wasn’t the only one. A record number of 8 million viewers saw the event live on YouTube.

Is this going to be the way forward for viewing live events?

Will more and more events be shown live on YouTube and will more and more people watch things on YouTube?

If you’re working in the strategy department of a TV company for example then you should definitely be reviewing the rise of importance of sites such as YouTube.

On the subject of YouTube I’m delighted that we’ve recently put some free ACCA, CIMA and FIA courses onto YouTube at www.youtube.com/theexpgroup

One thing for certain though is that we will never get anywhere near the number of YouTube views that Red Bull’s historic event received but then again making our videos wasn’t quite as dangerous…