That’s right, I called GoPro a media company. They’ve never really been manufacturers of awesome little cameras that produce high quality video. No, that was just their front for a much bigger, much more amazing vision. And while my declaration may not be groundbreaking news to all, this week’s launch of their GoPro Awards finally blew the cover on any last inkling that they were simply in the business of making cameras.
The GoPro Awards is a brand new program, with the company giving out a total of $5 million to its customers – the exact same people going out and buying their product to begin with. Each week they’ll be picking out the best content from nine different categories and cutting checks for action, travel, animals, family, motor sports, adventure, science & how-to and music. $5,000 goes to the best video edit, $1,000 to the best raw video clip and $500 will be given to the person with the best photo each week, incentivizing a lot of Average Joes to get out and do something gnarly.
I get that this isn’t life changing money for any single person…or is it? In a world where Youtube stars can become their own media personalities with sustainable careers and social media has made it near impossible to go to a baseball game (or anything else) without broadcasting it for the world, creating your own content is now a viable way to pay the bills. And beyond just offering the tools to record it all, GoPro has spent the last 13 years now tying itself as closely as possible to the word “action” while the world becomes more and more infatuated with “action sports.” We haven’t been able to watch an X-Games event without a first person replay. Search the word “GoPro” on Youtube today and you’ll find about 23,100,000 results. Every exotic surf trip imaginable now has an obligatory drone operated highlight reel filled with people getting spat out of barrels. First person wingsuits, skydiving, motorcycle races and hucking 50 foot gaps in the back country are all images we can only see in our minds with those slightly fish eyed lenses now. So it’s certainly safe to say GoPro has become more of a lifestyle brand than anything else. There’s something about watching “their” videos that sparks excitement and makes you want to do something different with your day/life/free time. Only these aren’t GoPro’s videos. They belong to the athletes, world travelers, daredevils, and all around creative minds using their products.
And now that we’ve watched the footage over and over and over, obsessed over wanting to take this trip or go on that adventure, or take up a new hobby altogether, we have a brand doing more than just saying get out there and do it. They’re nudging us out the door, camera in hand (or mounted on some part of our body) hoping we’ll do something amazing. Something worth sharing. That’s like a major television network saying “take this camera and if you happen to shoot an Emmy winner we’ll give you $5 million.” Except they’re handing said camera out to anybody and everybody (for a price) and letting the must watch programming roll in day after day. Like I said, they’ve accomplished a little more than just selling a few cameras. I guess now we just get ready for the next 23 million uploads to come pouring in. And I’ll bet we find some monster barrels, some awesome first descent lines, and any other number of gems the mind can dream up.
Yeah, this is a priceless view to begin with. But you want to pay me for it too? Sold.
