Technology Vendor: EyeWonder Inc.
Red Bull, maker of the world’s most popular energy drink, understands the power and potential of the Internet. They have cultivated a loyal following by creating and promoting events that bring Red Bull drinkers together online and offline. Their most recent event -- Giants of Rio -- pitted eighty teams from different countries against each other in a series of extreme sports competitions. For fans that couldn’t make it to Rio de Janeiro in person, Red Bull planned a live webcast to bring the event to them online.
Now the question became how to best drive people to tune-in to this live webcast. Red Bull approached EyeWonder with a tune-in video banner ad campaign that would feature Red Bull’s own video, edited to span the entire length and width of various banners, from leaderboards to skyscrapers and everything in-between. In all, seven different Full Video Banner ad units were created -- IAB standard ad sizes 728x90, 468x60, 160x600, 300x250, 520x70, and non-standard website-specific sizes 161x50 and 88x154.
The resulting Full Video Banner ad campaign used pure visual impact to maximize awareness of the event. When delivered in-page, the effect was unlike any conventional banner ad, as the video played instantly and spanned the entire banner (all seven of them!). This campaign ran on a targeted group of sports enthusiast sites and generated remarkable numbers. Over 2 million video ad impressions were delivered, with full view rates as high as 66% and click-thrus as high as 2.07 percent! EyeWonder’s attention-arresting Full Video Banner ad was the perfect vehicle for delivering Red Bull’s unique eye-catching video and making Giants of Rio such a success.
-- Jason Scheidt, Director of Marketing, EyeWonder, Inc.
Wow! If you haven't yet experienced the fun of seeing the new EyeWonder Full Video Ad format, check out the Red Bull Giants of Rio Ad Unit. This much hearalded new ad unit is a full page width video banner (728X90 - standard IAB size), and includes user controls to stop the video and control the audio included on the right hand side of the ad unit. After a brief banner message, the ad unit launches its instant streaming video and audio message. Very impressive!
In this Red Bull ad, the visuals are of an extreme sport competition in Rio De Janeiro. Background images include many of the more distinctive city images of Rio to ground the viewer, combined with exciting mountain biking, running, swimming, and other competitive scenes. What the Red Bull / Eyewonder ad units does best is get your attention. As advertisers get more experience with these unique ad types, I would expect that we will see more visually arresting video pieces specifically designed to take advantage of the specific size of this horizontal video ad.
The advertisement is a little light on Red Bull branding, and the closing banner ad does an adequate job of communicating the upcoming webcast of the Red Bull Rio event. As happens all too frequently, the logo for the event is not very clear or understandable in its small web execution, but is probably excellent in print. Marketers need to recognize the space limititations of the banner ad, and provide logo ads that can clearly pop in this confined space.
-- Neil Perry, Marketing Consultant, Neil Perry Associates, Inc.
I’m not going to talk about non-user-initiated audio – the debate is as painfully unresolveable as T&C’s. But the opening video sequence is strong; two thumbs up for selecting a real piece of music, as opposed to a non-descript royalty-free 2 bar vamp. It complements the striking visuals and bravely connotes human triumph and excitement without being unnecessarily lofty or too ethereal.
I appreciate how Red Bull has carved out a niche within sporting which can sometimes be as hard to sponsor as watching can be to stomach. These events are less about traditional athleticism (in the corn-fed and weight room sort of way) and more about precision, instinct, courage and I would guess an abundance of tattoos. It’s the kind of sponsorship not suitable for your deli-variety electrolyte isotonic sports drink. Executionally, the unit is spot on. But it’s trying to do too much heavy lifting in a static resolve image: Merchandise the sponsorship, Webcast tune in, employing clever use of the color palette from a Jimi Hendrix album. All which renders the static image as a compromise gone materially askew. The ad was so close: but advertising, like the sporting events Red Bull sponsors, rely on exactness.
--Scott Witt, Group Director, Digital