Remember this?
It was the highest ever skydive.
Falling to earth from the edge of space, Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner
became the first human to break the sound barrier.
Eight million people watched it live on Youtube, a record at the time.
It was shown on nearly 80 TV stations in 50 countries.
“It just doesn't get cooler than this”
And the whole thing was sponsored and distributed
by a drinks company, famous for its unconventional marketing.
Red Bull behaves very differently to most other companies;
it runs sports teams, a TV channel, even a record label.
It’s kind of like this massive extreme sports marketing, youth festival, party company that
happens to also sell a drink.
That drink transformed the beverage industry by creating not just a new brand, but a whole
new category; the ‘energy drink’.
And while Red Bull faces increasing pressure from rivals, it still dominates the Energy
Drink Market.
A blend of caffeine, sugar, B vitamins and taurine - it’s what people reach for when
a coffee doesn’t seem enough.
Why?
Red Bull is a marketing company. It all comes down to their tagline
"Red Bull gives you wings."
What does that mean? That means Red Bull makes you a badass. Red Bull makes you brave.
Red Bull makes you adventurous. Red Bull keeps you up all night. Red Bull keeps you focused.
Red Bull creates videos like these to define its adventurous identity. That image helped
them sell 6.7 billion cans in 2018.
Success that has made its founders - and their secretive family members - very rich.
I can't think of many companies that have created as many billionaires as Red Bull has.
Altogether you've got 12 billionaires from this one company.
The richest of those billionaires is the founder Dietrich Mateschitz.
Barely known outside his native Austria Mateschitz is one of the most successful entrepreneurs
of our age.
He founded Red Bull following an eye-opening business trip to Thailand.
At the time he was selling cosmetics and decided to try a tonic the locals drank called Krating Daeng
- which means ‘Red Bull’ in Thai.
He claims it fixed his jet lag instantly.
Two years later - while on business in Hong Kong - Mateschitz discovered that a maker
of such energy tonics made so much money it was the top corporate taxpayer in Japan.
It gave him an idea.
He’d make his own version of an Asian tonic and market it in the West.
Mateschitz went into business with the founder of Krating Daeng, tweaked the recipe, added
bubbles and put the drink in a slick, slimline can
It was something nobody had ever heard of, an energy drink was completely beyond the
pale. It was like a brand new idea, a brand new concept.
Shortly after the drink’s launch in 1987, Red Bull sponsored an event that would set
the tone for the company ethos.
Billed as the toughest relay in the world - the Dolomitenmann combines mountain running,
paragliding, mountain biking and kayaking.
Red Bull made sure its name was associated with sports and events on the extreme end
of the spectrum
Formula 1 racing
Cliff Diving
Base Jumping
Crashed Ice
The Air Race
There’s also the more family-friendly - but no less extraordinary - Flugtag and Soapbox
events that attract huge crowds.
That's one of the really fascinating things about Mateschitz, is he did kind of invent
this guerrilla marketing, out-of-the box, multi, multi, multi-platform.
He's probably considered a marketing genius.
They're extraordinarily creative. They're not just going out and slapping their name
on an event that's been around for a long time and acting as a sponsor. They're actually
coming up with these incredibly elaborate stunts.
It is aligning itself with, I think a very core part of youth culture.
That hasn’t sat well with some.
In 2011 the American Academy of Pediatrics accused energy drink companies
of marketing to children.
the popularity of energy drinks has seen a rise in hospital admissions and even deaths,
mainly linked to issues with how caffeine affects the heart.
Despite it being an industry-wide issue, Red Bull often bears the brunt as the brand’s
popularity means it has become synonymous with the 'energy drink'.
But that isn’t to say it hadn’t attracted controversy before: Red Bull has been banned
in several countries over concerns about its ingredients - most studies into their safety
have proved inconclusive.
Despite the bad PR, Red Bull continued to grow and has enjoyed decades of extreme profitability…
much of that was down to how the drink was priced.
At about $2 a can, it’s easily the most expensive energy drink on the shelf.
Rather than deter consumers, the price set the product apart.
Rival brands started to piggyback Red Bull’s success, selling larger cans to compete.
In the US they’ve managed to catch up.
Monster recently has overtaken Red Bull as the market leader.
If I were Red Bull, I'd be nervous.
In a bid to keep the Coca-cola-backed Monster at bay,
Red Bull has lowered prices to grab back some market share.
Creative guerilla marketing alone might not be enough to keep the company at the top.