You?ve probably seen Red Bull?s recent video showing people swinging between hot-air balloons in the ?Mega Swing.? As a content creator myself, I think it?s great.
It?s almost uninformative at this point to say that Red Bull is doing sharable content right. The company has been mastering it since before it famously helped Felix Baumgartner skydive from the edge of space.
But this, in particular, is a really nice example of how a brand can elevate content to otherwise unreachable heights by letting the idea drive and staying out of its own way. Red Bull does this all the time.
But what makes this type of content so sharable"
In the world of content creation, the term ?shareable? says that something was made with the intention to be shared and therefore is attempting to align with the best practices for the internet. This includes branded and unbranded content. But the problem is, the term is extremely generic. It?s more of a mantra than a qualitative judgment. Just as with ?viral? five to 10 years ago, calling something ?shareable? doesn?t necessarily make it so.
Shareable vs. viral
The term viral essentially fell out of fashion because it ultimately described a result that was hard to attain. As such, lots of non-viral stuff was called viral, and it made the whole discipline look unpredictable, unprofessional and even snake-oily.
It also began to describe a specific look and feel: ultra-low budget, handheld cameras, faux-user-generated content and some guy saying, ?D...