Jump like Felix and take a Red Bull Stratos risk!

We must take a chance…we must try something new.

We must take that risk and create content that has the social share impact. What do I mean…find ways to create and share content that connects with people at their core.

We are so worried about creating messages based on branded research, focus groups, and a lot of high dollar initiatives…when sometime we should let our gut lead us.

Janean Chun of Huffington Post writes, “The Austria-based company, founded by Dietrich Mateschitz in 1984, sold more than 4.6 billion cans of Red Bull worldwide in 2011.”

So what makes a brand like Red Bull financially back an initiative that takes a man into space to jump?

“…power of this marketing event lies in the synergy between the extreme event and the company’s existing marketing message. The jump ‘hits the brand message spot on, which is that Red Bull gives you wings.'”

Catharine Smith of Huffington Post writes“YouTube’s live stream of the event racked up over 8 million viewers just before Baumgartner took his death-defying plunge.”

According to AllThingsD, “The previous record for a single Web video service: Around 500,000 concurrent streams, which Google served up during the Olympics this summer.”

According to ABC News, “Besides YouTube, the jump was shown by more than 40 TV stations and 130 digital outlets. Red Bull’s Facebook post-jump photo of Baumgartner gained almost 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and over 29,000 shares within 40 minutes, and half the worldwide trending topics on Twitter were related to Red Bull Stratos.”

I do know about you…but I shed tears when he jumped. Why? I was standing there with him…LIVE. I felt the same emotion I felt when I was watching the landing of Curiosity on Mars. Remember when the whole Mission Control Room cheered out-of-control when they learned Curiosity was safe on the red planet.

Not only could I watch live, but I could interact with my friends and this extreme sports fan base in real time via the #JumpLive hashtag.

It was actually funny…my laptop battery was running down close to the time of the jump, and I was trying to find another television in the house that I could stream YouTube. Rose (my little girl) was watching cartoons in the den where YouTube could stream via my AppleTV. Finally found my back-up laptop charger so I could watch the jump.

As I watched him fall, I wondered…is he alive? No matter if he broke the sound barrier (traveling at a peak of 833.9 mph), I was relieved when I he replyed to mission control while he was free falling.

And when he landed…WE ALL CHEERED WITH FELIX.

Yes, we all jumped up and cheered with Felix when he touched down raised his arms in excitement.

How can we create content, experiences, situations with our audiences that inspire such emotion…and break away from just marketing a message.

Sometimes we just have to jump and take a risk…Felix and Red Bull did.

***Images from HuffingtonPost.com