Red Bull takes on new content for linear channel

Red Bull Media House will build the presence of its Red Bull TV channel, hitherto available online, on traditional pay TV platforms by  expanding the range of content on the service, according to Bernard Haffenscher, head of commercial distribution.

Haffenscher told TV Connect attendees this morning that Red Bull was bringing in music festival content, programming related to the arts, nature documentaries, gaming-related shows and real-life stories to complement its traditional diet of action sports content.

Haffenscher said Red Bull Media House targets an audience that is “not exactly a demographic” but a “psychographic” of people who are keen to follow content associated with the Red Bull brand. This audience is not fixated on a particular genre of content but on content that they associate psychologically with a company that started life as a provider of energy drinks.

“We need to move out of action sports into new areas,” said Haffenscher. “We are dong nature documentaries and all sorts of non-fiction content.”

He said Red Bull was also now talking to a broader consumer audience as well as selling its new content mix to third-party distributors.

“We are going more towards storytelling, not only in extreme sports but about people who are creating startup companies or whatever. This has given us a lot more credibility beyond our original media content,” he said.

“Red Bull TV is spread over all the available OTT platforms but also is available for distribution with operators as an app or as a channel.”

He said Adidas had been one of the first advertisers to sign up to this new approach. The Adidas outdoor division ran a campaign last October called Open All Winter advertising sports gear.

“We ran a classic banner campaign and integrated them in all our social media in a very native way, giving them a good brand fit and delivering the values promised in the campaign. We delivered the KPIs that were agreed two weeks before the campaign finished,” he said.