Kickoff: 2012
Client: Red Bull
Status: live
The story
Red Bull Flow
We helped Red Bull conceive, design, build and launch a new user generated video platform in under four months
The Challenge
In spring 2012 Red Bull UK set us a big and exciting challenge - could we help them deliver the values of their pro athlete performance management service to a wider audience to help them get better at the sports they love?
Our observation
Every day, hundreds of hours of amateur sports videos are added to the web, but most of it just heads off into the content graveyards of the big video sites. We asked Red Bull - can we help make that video more useful in helping the people who make it get better at the sports they love?
The hypothesis
We hypothesised a simple solution - codenamed Red Bull Airtime - a digital service focused on tagging existing amateur / semi-pro video with useful information, tricks, locations, riders etc. We planned to build it on the Youtube API. These tagged videos could then enable smarter ways of finding, exploring and learning from the content.
The hack
We built the first version of the app in about three days, and explored what other people were doing in the space and showed the app to skateboarders and BMXers. As soon as we started using this hack and getting feedback, we spotted some fundamental issues with the concept - it wasn't focused enough on new stuff and it wasn't focused enough on you and your mates (who you ride with). We also spotted a new behaviour - most the guys we met were sharing very short clips via Facebook on their phones, alongside creating and uploading the longer 'edits' to Youtube.
The pivot
Our rapid product and customer development pointed to an obvious twist on the original idea - instead of chopping up old videos, we should build a camera app optimised for filming sports clips, that lets users publish right from their phones. We could then ask the users to add the special tags at the point of publishing, which would enable us (and them) to concatenate different clips together based on tags to create new edits around tricks, spots, teams, people and so on as per the original idea. This also solved a bunch of technical issues around video formats, sound and quality.
The alpha
We started cranking out the new app as quickly as possible. It was about three weeks since we'd started work. We planned to get an alpha release / MVP out the door within four weeks, giving us another six weeks to get a more polished beta done.
The beta
We built a LOT of features, and tested them with our alpha users. We then removed a lot of stuff as we'd gone a bit far for an MVP. We spent time polishing, testing and further reducing the number of features, and, in under four months from the start of the project we were ready to ship to the app store, and launch with three very simple hypothesis about what users would want to do with Flow.
Projects
Task Squad
For the fourth and final Sidekick School project we looked at the problem of youth unemployment with the youth-led charity vInspired.
Red Bull Amplifier
We're working with Red Bull on a novel accelerator programme for music startups - if you’ve got a creative, change-the-face-of-music startup, we’d love to hear from you.
Narrative
For this new Sidekick School project we've teamed up with Inaura, the folks who dedicate their life to inclusion in education, to help transform Alternative Provision.