Interesting that Red Bull didn't respond to his request for sponsorship. He said himself that he doesn't fit the mold (no self promotion, plays piano, no other extreme sports), but that seems like it might be a great strength, to attract a different audience? An odd introvert looked up to by other odd introverts?
Or maybe everything about marketing/advertising will always lean towards catering to extroverts/neurotypical people.
(Also unrelated, I wonder if there is a link between less anxiety and getting into an "instinctual" state. Like how he does juggling before a dive)
Somewhat related, Monster bev has a 'no nerds' policy. Just tongue in cheek I emailed them about sponsorship for an OSS project that was practically built by Monster Ultra Fiesta and the email response spelled it out in no uncertain terms, no nerds.
I think the extreme part is the height. And the impression I get is that we already maxed out the height in the 80s because you can only jump from so high. So the sport is kind of dead. I haven't looked into it at all because, like most people, i just don't find it very interesting.
The scores are computed as degree of difficulty x judge's rating. So the higher up, the more moves can be fit into a ~3s fall. So there's a lot of zero sum thinking there: do you do one medium-hard thing very well, one hard thing mediocre, or three things strung together? That's a little of the appeal for me.
Also, I did a little 10m which is just a taste of this.
> No. It's a liability. Brands are about focusing on niche markets with common interests.
A fair assessment.
> No. It's about being able to sell to them and promote to them. Being able to promote what you're selling is a prerequisite to being able to sell it.
I'm not sure what your "no" is disagreeing with here. Is it that marketing will not have a lean because they will always choose to market toward their audience?
I would disagree with that. Marketing/advertisers think in generalizations. The formal processes of audience description and creating example personas are fully based on those generalizations. These methods are extremely helpful, I've done them before myself, and they produce useful methodology and next steps.
But these generalizations are built on popular culture, which is dictated by societal normalcy, past media (generational upbringing), etc. Those generalizations always contain normalcy/socially acceptable leanings, which means marketing as structured currently would need to go out of its way to combat this leaning. Which they don't, no one cares, the workers complete the work, get paid, and go home.
The Messi comment wasn't trying to be snarky. Was trying to foster an actual conversation about what it means to be great and how does context matter. Sorry if it came across as insulting or uninteresting- that was not my intention.
So we're just editorializing titles now? The title of the article is "No coach, no agent, no ego: the incredible story of the ‘Lionel Messi of cliff diving’"
That is, we specifically don't use the original title when it is misleading or linkbait, as the original title in this case was.
When we do edit a title, we try to use representative language from the article itself wherever possible—e.g. a subtitle, a phrase from the text, or something else where the article says neutrally what it is actually about. That's what I did in this case; the language came from the subheading.
As a European (a Brit) I haven't personally heard of either of those two people. Whereas I do know Messi, and I assume by comparing to him they mean "someone with rare skill for doing what they do better than anyone else (probably while making it look easier than it is)".
Anecdote of 1 of course... but I'd also guess that I'm not an outlier, and Messi is much better known than your two suggestions in pretty much any country.
Consider my comment in the context of the one that I replied to: I named big-wall climbers because their sport is similarly extreme and unusual in the broader population, unlike soccer/football which is neither.
As for the climbers, Honnold achieved some normie fame as the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary[1]. Steck was also among the best climbers ever, but his speed records centered on the Alps (hence my joking aside about the Euro audience).
"He is, unquestionably, the greatest cliff diver of all time, “the Michael Jordan, the Muhammad Ali, the Tiger Woods” of the sport, as Steven LoBue, an American diver who had the misfortune of competing against Hunt for many years, put it in 2021."
So, it's the second pair of speedos that ups the protection? Is one pair that much better than two pair when hitting the water at 50 MPH?