Red Bull Media House

Building a creator-powered content model from the ground up

When I joined Red Bull Media House, the company had a well-established network of talent, from artist to athletes. But creators were uncharted territory.

I was brought in as the first person globally dedicated to figuring out how to work with creators, and how to make it fit the company’s relationship-first approach. There was no creator strategy, programme or infrastructure to build from. I had to create it all.

From amplifying Red Bull to creating with Red Bull

The initial strategy focused on bringing creators into experiences aligned with their interests through access to events, athletes and sports that were relevant to them and their audiences. As those relationships developed, I saw a bigger opportunity.

Creators could be more than people who amplified Red Bull. They could become production partners to create new editorial stories around the world of Red Bull.

That meant giving them creative ownership, whilst developing stories specifically for Red Bull’s channels in new areas like history, science and technology. This brought a social-first perspective to storytelling, in particular on YouTube, where we focused on format development.

Building the system behind the model

I built the creator strategy and infrastructure from scratch, defining everything from who we wanted to work with and why, to how we identified, approached, contracted and managed those relationships. My global team worked directly with around 20 creators, while local markets built and managed their own creator networks. We supported them through guidelines, webinars and hands-on strategic guidance.

Putting the model into practice

Origins represented the vision behind the whole strategy of using creators to help Red Bull make new kinds of stories.

Developed by Andy Burgess, Origins followed athletes on journeys to discover the history and stories behind their sports. It combined creator-led storytelling, athlete access and a deeper editorial story from the world of Red Bull. Andy led the creative development and production, while my team acted as executive producers throughout the process.

  • Why Bodyboarding Is the Unknown Origin of Surfing?

    Andy and bodyboarding champion Hugo Pinheiro travel to Hawaii to uncover the origins of bodyboarding and take on some of the island’s infamous waves.

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  • Freeskier Tries 500-Year-Old Skis w/ Paddy Graham & Jon Olsson

    Andy joins freeskiier Paddy Graham in Sweden to trace the ancient origins of skiing and how it evolved from survival tool to competitive sport.

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  • How Fencing Became One of the World’s Fastest Sports?

    With Olympic gold medalist Olga Kharlan, Andy unpacks the history of fencing and the dramatic events that shaped the sport’s rules.

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  • This Sport Wouldn't Exist Without Viral Video

    Andy traces how YouTube and social media helped shape the evolution of parkour and freerunning, from viral videos to new movements and communities.

    Watc

Other creator-led work

Can Sim Racing Make a Future F1 Champion? — Alex Pettit
Alex Pettit investigates whether simulator racing can help develop the skills needed for Formula 1, following sim racer Igor Fraga on his path towards professional motorsport.

Why Is Skydiving So Popular? — Luke Korns
Filmmaker Luke Korns and skydiver Amy Chmelecki unpack how skydiving evolved from jumping out of planes to a global competitive sport, bringing a creator-led perspective to the world of extreme sports.

Can Superstitions Help Athletes Perform Better? — Tom Carroll
Science creator, Tom Carroll looks at the rituals and superstitions of elite athletes, asking whether seemingly irrational routines might actually affect performance.

Is Pierre Gasly Superhuman? — Answer in Progress
Melissa, from Answer in Progress, puts Formula 1 driver Pierre Gasly’s cognitive abilities to the test, unpacking the mental skills needed to make decisions at racing speeds.

What Can Hummingbirds Teach an Indoor Skydiver? — Alex Dainis
Scientist Alex Dainis and indoor skydiver Maja Kuczynska put the science of hummingbird flight to the test, translating animal behaviour into an experiment in the wind tunnel.

Freerunning in Santorini — Ben Kealy
Filmmaker Ben Kealy captures the energy of Red Bull Art of Motion in Santorini, following the world’s top freerunners through a competition built around style, flow and acrobatic skill.

Changing how Red Bull thought about YouTube content…

The work began to influence how other teams globally approached content, adopting a more YouTube-native and format approach, while local markets saw how working with creators could make certain productions more nimble and cost-effective.

What started as a question, “how do we work with creators?” became a new way of thinking about creators as part of Red Bull’s content operation.

…and it changed me too.

Working so closely with creators changed how I thought about storytelling too. I watched people make stories they were excited about, and saw what happened when they were given the freedom and support to make them on their own.

So in time, I wanted to do the same. And a year later, I started telling stories under A Nordic Heart. I always say, Red Bull gave me wings. But my creators gave me the courage to fly.