[chrisboesing]

Maybe a little off topic:

Red Bull's marketing is impeccable. They started out with all the actionsport athletes and moved upstream to more mainstream, and I guess, more expensive sports (two Formula 1 teams, more soccer teams than I can count), while still doing these crazy things. From Parcours in Santorini, to Air Races all over the world. Seems like every crazy sporting event is sponsored by Red Bull.

I think these have allowed them to be still seen as "hip" and not just selling sugar water like Coca Cola.

[Trezoid]

Redbull: Sponsoring everything cool.

It is, absolutely, a genius marketing strategy. Their primary demographic just happens to be the kinds of people who watch insane sports. Brand recognition from those events is huge, and then people just happen to drop their brand-name when talking about the events to other people.

Probably cheaper in the long-run than trying to compete with someone like Coca Cola in more traditional campaigns, and way more effective.

[lloyddobbler]

Agreed.

And like Coke and Kleenex, through sheer brand awareness, they've achieved that rare feat in which a company's brand becomes synonymous with an object. In conversation throughout the world,

Soft Drink = "Coke" Tissue = "Kleenex" Energy Drink = "Red Bull"

[arethuza]

There are cases where smaller companies with good marketing can out sell Coca Cola in local markets - a good example being Irn Bru:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irn-Bru

[mmaunder]

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-dietrich-mateschitz-ignor...

[franze]

and like all good things, it started by accident. (i got this story from one of their marketing managers) once upon a time someone at the formula 1 won a race. and the masterchief (or however the bosses of the racing teams are called) drank a red bull instead of champagne during the victory interview.

next day red bull was sold out in austria (which was their main market at that time)

they just took it from there.

[freehunter]

As if winning a Formula 1 race isn't enough of a rush, you need some caffeine afterwards too!

[Piskvorrr]

"It was an accident," quoth their marketing manager. Yeah, riiiiiiiiight.

[wtvanhest]

It’s more likely that a marketing manager would take personal credit for an accident (i.e. boosting their resume) than to attribute a brilliant marketing to an accident.

[Piskvorrr]

You are neglecting one issue: advertising and lawsuits. "Oh look, we have smuggled our product into the tightest-controlled advertising event, and we did it on purpose; sure, we'll happily pay you the $$$ for this priceless publicity boost." vs "Oh, it was an accident, there's no way we'll pay you anything."

I'm completely certain that the F1 organizers would sue the heck out of Red Bull for their unauthorized ad, if they only could prove RB did it on purpose (and RB isn't so foolish to provide them with ammunition).

[wtvanhest]

What exactly do you think F1 would sue Red Bull for?

Without RB having a contract of some type with F1, it is unlikely there is any way for them to sue RB. It may be possible for F1 to sue the driver, but at this point that would seem ridiculous since RB is now a huge F1 sponsor.

Accidents also don't eliminate lawsuits. Even if there was a way for F1 to sue RB, they should still be able to sue them for accidents. For example, if RB had a contract with F1 which stipulated when and how RB could be shown, and RB showed their product at a different time by accident F1 could still sue them.

[yitchelle]

Hmm.. OK.. And how many free [insert kick back item here] will this marketing fellow get for this little effort :-?

Nevertheless, what a marketing effort! They really nailed this one.

[kahawe]

> next day red bull was sold out in austria (which was there main markets at that time)

This is also where the Western version of Red Bull is from. Originally it was an energy drink in Thailand and an Austrian partnered up with the Thai owner, adapted it to suit the Western palate and ever since then they have been going incredibly strong and long survived all energy-drink competitors that shortly popped up during the 90s.

Mateschitz's and Yoovidhya's net worth is about 5 billion each.

I don't think there is any important extreme sport event they are not involved in. Their annual "Flugtag" is legendary here in Austria! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull_Flugtag

[nicholassmith]

Yep, they've nailed the brand image without a doubt. Everything they do is to go "This isn't your dads soft drink", and it seems to have worked pretty well.

Also very cool, they own their own aerobatics team called The Flying Bulls, and they have a B25 bomber. Why? Because they can, and that's awesome.