Red Bull, a stunning example of Neo-Liberalism
Red Bull, a stunning example of Neo-Liberalism:
Almost everybody around the globe knows Red Bull. Even if this brand was less known a few months ago, this company is making sure you will hear about them with their space program baptized ‘Red Bull Stratos’1. The idea was to make a man jump from the highest point possible in the stratosphere, as a way to attract the attention of as many people as possible. So they made Felix Baumgartner, an athlete having the same nationality as Red Bull itself (Austrian) jump 39 kilometers above New-Mexico. As he went at a top speed of 1357.6 km/h, going faster than the speed of sound (he reached Mach 1.25), the 9 minutes and 3 seconds of fall he realized were followed by tens of millions of spectators live via TV or internet websites such as YouTube2 or Dailymotion. The veracity of the speed he reached, as well as the distance he jumped, are still questioned, as the numbers seem to have been exaggerated to render this quite foolish and dangerous act even more astonishing. Another quite interesting fact is that on the 18th of October 2010, Red Bull was forced to announce they had to cancel this project, after Daniel Hogan, an entrepreneur, attacked them in April at the supreme Court of California in Los Angeles, saying he invented this concept of space jumping with a parachute and accusing Red Bull of stealing the idea from him without even consulting him3. This right of action was soon arranged amicably, and on the 5th of February 2012, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph announced publicly that the project would be realized in no time. Nothing about the reasons which pushed Daniel Hogan to stop his action were given, but surely a tremendous amount of money was involved in the process to help him forget this stealth and permit Red Bull to realize the biggest advertisement coup of all times.
By doing so, Red Bull managed to do something no other company did before: target and reach every single ethnic, gender and age
Almost everybody around the globe knows Red Bull. Even if this brand was less known a few months ago, this company is making sure you will hear about them with their space program baptized ‘Red Bull Stratos’1. The idea was to make a man jump from the highest point possible in the stratosphere, as a way to attract the attention of as many people as possible. So they made Felix Baumgartner, an athlete having the same nationality as Red Bull itself (Austrian) jump 39 kilometers above New-Mexico. As he went at a top speed of 1357.6 km/h, going faster than the speed of sound (he reached Mach 1.25), the 9 minutes and 3 seconds of fall he realized were followed by tens of millions of spectators live via TV or internet websites such as YouTube2 or Dailymotion. The veracity of the speed he reached, as well as the distance he jumped, are still questioned, as the numbers seem to have been exaggerated to render this quite foolish and dangerous act even more astonishing. Another quite interesting fact is that on the 18th of October 2010, Red Bull was forced to announce they had to cancel this project, after Daniel Hogan, an entrepreneur, attacked them in April at the supreme Court of California in Los Angeles, saying he invented this concept of space jumping with a parachute and accusing Red Bull of stealing the idea from him without even consulting him3. This right of action was soon arranged amicably, and on the 5th of February 2012, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph announced publicly that the project would be realized in no time. Nothing about the reasons which pushed Daniel Hogan to stop his action were given, but surely a tremendous amount of money was involved in the process to help him forget this stealth and permit Red Bull to realize the biggest advertisement coup of all times.
By doing so, Red Bull managed to do something no other company did before: target and reach every single ethnic, gender and age