Creative storytelling was going to be key to breaking through, but as important would be using data to craft the flow of each episode. Best practice at the time (the series began in 2018 and things have evolved) was to lead each episode with a sticky cold open. The strategy around the first 15 seconds was a hyper focus on building clear intros that hold retention, engaging viewers with a concise premise. Think action + cliffhanger
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Fast Life
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Fast Life
Groundbreaking creative storytelling WHICH set the bar for the sport
Often referred to as mountain biking's "Drive to Survive," Fast Life started off as a simple idea: tell the stories of Downhill racer Loic Bruni and Cross Country athlete Kate Courtney. From that seed of an idea from Specialized bicycles and Red Bull Media House we got to work. The mountain bike content space is super sophisticated (and extremely crowded) so we knew that if we wanted to cut through the noise our new series would have to be something special.
client
Red Bull
location
Too many to list
days of production
28 individual shoots
Favorite Rider
We're not telling
MISSION
Leaning into the Data
6
The sweet spot of episodes per season
30
total # of episodes of 5 seasons
Leveraging Endemic Athlete Reach
Our series protagonists Kate, Loic and Finn all have strong social followings. With the blessing of Red Bull, we were able to forward individual promo assets to them directly, that promoted tune-in to the series and significantly drove viewership numbers. With an average of six episodes per season, the pacing of these assets was carefully managed to not overwhelm the feeds of any one athlete.
Sport can be super serious - but we also wanted to make it fun. It's the humor and pop culture references that ended up separating the series from the tsunami of "me too" mountain bike content.
Fun facts
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We come up with the episode themes before the season starts - but the on track drama is 100% on the athletes
During Season Three, both Loic and Kate claimed the highest honor in the sport: the UCI World Cup Overall
We were forced to switch female narrators for Season Five. No one in the comments appeared to notice