Red Bull gained 46 million views with YouTube Shorts - Could you do it?
Sweat coming down on your forehead, as you finally finish your first wheel for great journeys to come.
A sudden lightning strikes and a shockwave reaches you. As you look up you see an unknown object flying through the atmosphere graciously. It’s a spaceship, something you’ve never seen before.
The cool kid on the bloc, a magician, and the culprit of sleepless nights for competing marketers. This is Red Bull. A one-of-a-kind brand redefining what great branding is, and how it is done. A spaceship in an ocean of wheels. A fast-paced adventure waiting for you to join.
The question is, should you steal some moves or stick to what works for you? Let’s dive in.
How does Red Bull reach the market - Shorter content for maximum engagement
Red Bull was founded on the idea that young people will always seek two things: freedom, and making their dreams come true. Red Bull is not the land of the promise, but the shaman, the medicine man enabling it, giving you wings (What a missed opportunity from KFC to not use that tagline).
The brand archetype of Red Bull is somewhere between the Explorer and the Magician, and it’s the single most important foundation of their entire strategy. Their vision of embodying these well-known characters through their stories is what makes Red Bull one of the most relatable brands out there. You understand them, and they understand you.
The vision is the brand’s unique advantage, their strategy is to stick to it.
By creating an adrenaline-fueled experience Red Bull’s strategy to focus more on YouTube Shorts seems to be an obvious move. With 40% of Gen Z users preferring Reels, Stories or TikTok videos, YouTube’s Shorts feature is exactly what Red Bull needed to expand its brand one step ahead. Not only because the format is new, but because it’s so new that competitors are still just tiptoeing around it, while Red Bull has an entire channel for it.
46 million views in less than a year - How does Red Bull manage its shorts
The channel in question is Red Bull Deutschland Shorts and let’s see how it seems to work.
Starting with the cover image, it has everything to make it a full-blown channel. Great cover, social links, and even their Twitch is added to it. All formats are included in an easy-to-navigate manner. Have you seen Facebook added to it? Me neither.
The little less than a-year-old channel already has more than 52.000 subscribers, and has amassed close to 46 million views. Believing that their growth is organic, calculating with rough cost-per-view estimates of 0.03$/view would mean a total creation of +1m$ in marketing value. The channel grew with 10k new subscribers and 10m+ views in just under two weeks.
Now the keyword in YouTube is accumulation. The videos you upload can accumulate more and more views over time, meaning that your initial investment will truly come online in the long run. Companies can best utilize YouTube if they do it the way creators do it. Trying formats for at least 6 months and seeing what sticks, then doubling down.
The long-term investment should bring sustainable, organic growth instead of advertisement-backed peaks during campaigns.
Another important thing is that they seem to already utilize their community to some degree by running a few questionnaires. With 6% of their subscriber count answering such questions as “Which sport do you do the most?” they can adapt their content strategy quickly.
YouTube Shorts Strategy - Red Bull’s take
Doubling monthly as Red Bull - What can you expect with Shorts?
Red Bull’s content strategy has revolved around creating event-related or affiliate-based content. The same strategy seems to be applied to their shorts. 10-30 second and one-minute videos, with action-packed content, resonate best with the audience. The numbers so far speak for themselves:
The engagement rates are quite average, as most videos on YouTube produce roughly the same ratios. My personal take is that leaving comments on YouTube Shorts shouldn’t be as commonplace as on long-format videos. This is simply the reason, that the video usually ends before you have the ability to write a comment, and you might binge more right after.
The channel uploads once every day as it currently seems, with each video reaching between 10-20k views in a week, averaging around 40-50k in a month, with some videos having views in the hundred thousands. This means that with 30 videos/month upload/production speed the channel reaches at least 1 million views just for the new videos. Remember, the keyword for growth was accumulation.
Based on the data, the average videos reach between 10-20k views and then the algorithm drops them. Even with time, they do not amass more views. This seems to be the case with around 80% of the videos.
The Pareto principle seems to be working, with the 20% rest producing most of the views.
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YouTube Shorts content - What makes for good short-format videos?
After seeing the statistics, let’s take a look at the content itself.
Based on the titles Red Bull promotes two types of content:
It is unquestionable, where Red Bull gets its quality videos from. The sponsored events in the different niches of extreme sports produce endless hours of video content. These then get “recycled” into short format videos with the catchiest moments shown. World records, stunts, and unbelievable moments in sports. These generally perform well, with some videos bringing in views above the average.
The other, maybe more “expensive” format, is coming from their affiliate program. With influencers - already having larger audiences - working with Red Bull, they are heavily featured on the Shorts channel, bringing in outstanding results for some videos. Larger names like PashaTheBoss (Movement artist), Brodie Pawson (Parkour Athlete) Fabio Wibmer (Cyclist) can bring in close to, or more than a million views on 15-30 second videos.
The titles heavily prefer action-based directives and sensational titles (that live up to the hype) with less focus on keywords. This could also signal that Red Bull doesn’t count on YouTube’s algorithm to be sophisticated enough for promoting the Shorts format through keywords, just yet. Rather, the recommendation-based, binge-type watch-time is more probable. For this, it is more practical to use billboard-type taglines that can catch attention.
The thumbnails, however, don’t aim at “popping out” from the crowd of videos. No emojis, with taglines rarely appearing on the screen. This either will improve later on, or Red Bull is putting critical effort into maintaining a clean brand appearance, as it does throughout its channels.
What Red Bull’s Shorts channel mean for YouTube Shorts Marketing in 2022
Creating content like Redbull - How to create Shorts that drive views
Where to start working on your YouTube strategy, you might ask? Always start with finding your audience. Strictly after defining your own vision for your brand that you’d like to communicate. Keep in mind, short-format video content is a fast-growing, potent niche, with 15 billion views daily, mostly on mobile.
Create your ideal customer persona listing their goals, frustration, interests, and general profile. This will help you research trends and formats that truly work for the audience. Testing it afterward shouldn’t be a problem. Always follow the build, measure, learn iterative cycle, and look at YouTube as a project that needs to be improved over time, to pay dividends.
Just as with Google, marketers need to understand SEO is key on YouTube too, even though this is currently less prominent of an aspect with Shorts, identifying trends in formats, content, thumbnails, and so on can make you stick out from the crowd at all times. Putting yourself ahead of the competition in short-format will mean more long-format subscribers as well to your other videos. This will result in organic growth from Shorts too. Research Google Trends, Shorts trends, and TikTok trends separately, and get inspired for your new video ideas.
Ideate, create, measure, and double down on the format that brings in the most views. From the machinery industry to toys and fishing all niches have their winning content, that people will want to watch. Either allocate time to develop your own content, or pay affiliate partners, who already have a following to push the formats you are providing. Collaboration can bring benefits to all.
Should you follow Red Bull’s YouTube Shorts marketing strategy?
I believe that everyone has the ability to rank well on YouTube, drive business, and achieve steady organic growth with it. However, this requires two things: perseverance, and patience. Two keywords closely related to accumulation. As half of the job is “just showing up” meaning posting and iterating on formats, having 1 or 2 team members work on shorts could get you great results. Without full-time commitment, without crazy budget allocations.
Creativity and consistency will bring you the results.
The other half of the story is committing to it long-term. If you’re not willing to do any of these, despite a potentially giant ROI, YouTube Shorts is just not for you. Just like with everything else, you’ll need a solid strategy, punctual execution, and consistent measurements of your results.
Not to FOMO people in, but those missing out on YouTube Shorts will fall back in the long run. Repeating over and over again: “We are too late for Instagram”, “We are too late for TikTok”, and “We are too late for Shorts” will leave you being the person in the room who’s right, but not the right person in the room. Your inability to renew your organization and your marketing strategy will mean slow death even among the biggest companies. The new generations care less about your prestige and more about your inclusivity and authenticity. You better find your voice or lose it for once and all.
Are you feeling lost? - How to do Shorts, YouTube, and video marketing?
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Founder and CEO @ tubics | YouTube Agentur
2yGreat insights Máté Majtán! Do you think Red Bull will follow that strategy ito create dedicated Shorts channels also on other markets apart from Germany?