Spreading Her Wings

If “Red Bull gives you wings,” it’s Maddy Zeringue’s job to reveal just where in the world those wings can take you.

Zeringue ’02, a communications and sociology double major while at Trinity, is now head of International Communications, Red Bull Media Network for the Red Bull Media House in Salzburg, Austria. There, she oversees a vast media network that broadcasts death-defying dives from the edges of outer space, live music festivals across the globe, aeronautical time trials, and extreme sports such as mountain bike racing.

Working remotely from her North Texas home—with a “small commute” to Europe once a month—Zeringue heads a network of communications professionals that creates and distributes stories in more than 170 countries worldwide. The role, which Zeringue assumed earlier in 2017, follows ten years of her success at Red Bull North America.

“I aim to be ‘the connector,’” Zeringue says. “Our audiences might be spread through hundreds of markets across the world, but I’m always looking to find that product that connects all of our viewers.”

While some consumers might just think of Red Bull as the “energy drink with the funny cartoon commercials” and the “Red-Bull-gives-you-wings” tagline, the company has become a media powerhouse, too, Zeringue says. The Red Bull Media House has been a pioneer in creating and broadcasting extreme sports, adventure, music, and lifestyle content for more than a decade.

“We’re broadcasting a lifestyle,” Zeringue notes. “People know the Red Bull drink, but we’re about ‘vitalizing’ the mind and body in all aspects of life.”

So, as Zeringue notes, people across the world might speak different languages, like different musical styles, or even have different media consumption habits, but Red Bull’s media brand aims to strike a common tone regardless of the culture.

“Watching mountain bikers tear down the mountainside—there’s a market for that all over the world,” says Zeringue, referencing the Red Bull Rampage, an annual “freeriding” mountain biking event that pits dozens of bikers against the cliff faces of Virgin, Utah. “This job isn’t just about producing content: this is bringing content to life.”

Keeping that content fresh also means Zeringue needs to keep her finger on the pulse of a modern audience that can be increasingly hard to impress.

“The modern consumer of media is ‘spoiled’ in the sense that all content comes to them, when and where they want it,” Zeringue says. “So we need to meet their expectations.”

In her decade with Red Bull, Zeringue has made a habit of meeting these lofty standards. While at Red Bull North America, she played a major role in creating and managing media distribution for the Red Bull Stratos leap, a 2012 event that saw Austrian space diver Felix Baumgartner perform a leap from 24 miles above Earth—just on the edge of space. Baumgartner, whose descent was a worldwide phenomenon watched by a YouTube broadcast-record nine million concurrent viewers, reached speeds of more than 800 mph before parachuting to safety. The broadcast of the leap earned Zeringue an Emmy award. While the titanic plummet helped Baumgartner set multiple skydiving world records, the event’s colossal viewership helped Zeringue and Red Bull usher in a new era for YouTube and other video hosting sites: live content streaming.

“Those nine million concurrent views? Still an online viewership record,” Zeringue says. “And that was a ‘breaking-the-system’ moment for online media, because people saw that watching live events online was a possibility.”

As Zeringue prepares for future opportunities to break records at her new position, she says she’s always drawing from her Trinity experience.

“I’m in a marketing career, so learning how to write at Trinity was probably the most powerful tool I developed there,” Zeringue notes.

And for someone who’s made a career in broadcasting death-defying feats, Zeringue says the lessons learned from the late Michael Kearl’s “Death and Dying” sociology class at Trinity have stuck with her throughout the years.

“That’s a class that, at first, I thought, ‘this will have no application in the real world,’” Zeringue says. “But in the class, I learned about how each culture has different ways of dealing with death. And at the end of the day, how we deal with death also says a great deal about how we treat our lives.”

“So,” Zeringue continues, “What this means for my job, is that when you’re going to market to somebody, you have to understand the society they are a product of. That mindset helps me connect all the different cultures and nationalities I work with daily.” Zeringue went on to earn her master’s degree in strategic public relations from the University of Southern California.

Zeringue encourages future students to “take chances” on Trinity classes in a similar fashion.

“That’s what’s really cool about a liberal arts education,” she says, “When you have the opportunity to take classes like that, and they end up helping you apply those lessons in your workplace, you can really use that degree to make things happen.”

While Zeringue doesn’t plan to partake in any skydives or motorcross events any time soon—much to the relief of her husband, Chris, a 2010 Trinity healthcare administration graduate and interim chief executive officer of North Texas Medical Center in Gainesville, Texas—she does see the “heights” of her media career as a natural part of her family legacy.

“My family has a long history of aviation,” Zeringue notes. “My grandfather built his own [WWII-era fighter] P-51 Mustang, and unfortunately crashed it; my mother learned how to fly solo in a glider when she was 16, and she’s now an airplane mechanic; my father is an airplane mechanic; and my brother-in-law is one of the top mechanics for Southwest Airlines.”

Continuing a career that’s spanned from Trinity’s skyline campus to the feet of the Alps in Salzburg, Zeringue says she delights in giving all spectators of Red Bull’s high-altitude, high-octane exhibitions a view from the top, too.

“Once you’ve gotten a taste of flying and freedom, and feel that you can see the whole world, it sticks with you forever,” Zeringue says. “So, for me to be able to share the love of aviation that some of our Red Bull athletes have, that’s what ‘gives me wings.’”