THEY have been used to combat road rage, understand animal behaviour and even to catch a motorist eating cereal behind the wheel. Now GoPro cameras are helping their thrill-seeking owners to earn six-figure sums.
Footage from the small strap-on cameras — of young people dangling by one hand from cranes, running and leaping from rooftops and jumping out of aircraft — have turned them into internet sensations with hundreds of thousands of fans.
Some of these “GoProneurs” have recruited agents and marketing experts to negotiate advertising deals and other lucrative spin-offs to sell merchandise and fashion.
A former charity worker, Louis Cole, 32, from Epsom, Surrey, has forged a lucrative career indulging his passion for adventurous travel which he films and posts online.
He has more than 2m subscribers to his YouTube channels and his videos on the social media platform have been viewed more than 149m times. Recent examples have featured him skydiving from a pink aeroplane in New Zealand, ballooning across the desert in Utah and eating a live scorpion.
He uses his online profile — which includes more than 699,000 followers on Twitter and 320,000 “likes” on Facebook — to negotiate deals with big advertisers including Mars and Procter & Gamble. Cole has also launched a clothing range called Find the Nomads. As well as advertising clips placed at the beginning of his short films, Cole is one of a growing number of GoPro entrepreneurs who hire themselves out to clients to make product placement videos.
The films are posted on their social media platforms, tapping into their large and loyal fan bases. Cole recently flew to Istanbul to make three videos for Turkish Airlines.
“It’s attractive to these big companies because they can work with these influencers and access their loyal network of followers,” said Jamie Searle, from Rightster, the online video marketing group that helped Cole negotiate the deal. “These guys have large audiences which they can monetise.”
Storror, a group of free runners — the sporting activity is known as parkour — also represented by Searle, have shot films for Google and Red Bull and recently completed a video for H&M, the clothing brand. The aim of the sport is to cross a complex environment as quickly as possible without using extra equipment. “They were kitted out in H&M clothes and were filmed climbing over the H&M store in Oxford Circus,” said Searle, who added that GoPro practitioners can easily earn six figures, with some pocketing more than £1m a year.
A video shot by Storror earlier this year to promote Dying Light, a video game, has had more than 6m views on YouTube. The three-minute film features a free runner being chased by zombies across the roofs of historic buildings in Cambridge.
“Parkour gives you such freedom,” said Storror member Scott Bass, 24, from Cambridge, who started free running when he was 14 and at 19 decided to give up his job at Marks & Spencer to make parkour his career. “It’s still a very new thing in the media world so the industry is slowly figuring it out,” he said. “I make a little money from YouTube revenue with the advertising but the majority is from commercial projects and commissions.”
James Kingston is a 25-year-old free climber from Southampton whose videos have attracted millions of views and allowed him to turn his hobby into a career.
Earlier this year, he hit the headlines when he climbed the 425ft arch at Wembley Stadium and a video he shot of himself climbing a crane in Southampton has had more than 3.7m views on YouTube.
In another he shot footage of himself using a “selfie stick” as he stood and then slowly rotated without safety equipment on top of a crane in Dubai.
His antics, in videos that carry adverts for leading brands, have allowed him to buy a BMW sports car and to travel the world. He also sells T-shirts, posters and stickers of his daring climbs.
The GoPro was created by American Nick Woodman in 2002 after he attached a 35mm camera to his hand to film himself surfing. More than 2.3m GoPro cameras were sold in 2012 and Woodman is worth an estimated £830m.