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| Felix cruising down back to earth from space |
When
dare devil Felix Baumgartner ascended to the edge of space donning a RedBull
branded pressurized capsule suspended beneath a giant helium balloon many did
not know that this was a PR opportunity that the manufacturers of Red Bull had
spotted and decided to pursue.
Just
like in fashion where the daring always end up as the fashion trend setters, A
PR professional should be daring and ready to take some risks in order to make
the brand to stand out from the rest.
Red
Bull would have totally lost it had Felix’s Capsule exploded into flames while
in space. Someone would have been question on the cost of funding that historic
jump and many would have been fired because of that campaign.
Below
are some of the reasons why that historic jump could not have been successful here
in Kenya because of our PR approaches of always playing safe and keeping off
unexplored waters.
“We
do not have budgets for that campaign” would have been the first excuse to be
given by the ever defensive brand managers.
“Our
CEO is not a fan of extreme sports and thus he is likely not to support that
event.” Would have come from the ‘very loyal’ employees in the marketing
department.
“We
cannot partner with “So & So’ because they are likely to hog all the
publicity from us. If we have to do it then we want to do it alone.”
“We
are not willing to sponsor the project because of security reasons; we don’t
want our brand to look like we are interfering with the government security
agencies especially with the terrorists threatening to strike our country.
“Many
of our customers do not live in the open arid areas (assuming that the jump
would have been held in a sparsely populated area) thus they will not be able
to experience or rather see the jump.” While we all saw the jump being beamed
by all leading media houses across the world.
“How
long will the jump last? Are we likely to achieve any media coverage bearing in
mind the short duration that the jump will last?
Finally,
the Sales Director would have thrown in their ‘usual line’ how much sales are
we likely to accrue from this activity.
All
said and done, those are the PR excuses that would have denied Kenyans the
chance to witness the world record
breaking 128,089 free falling jump that had a top speed of 834mph (1,342km/h)
thus breaking the sound barrier.
