QUESTION Red Bull has succeeded by doing everything unconventionally. Identify and discuss all the ways Red Bull has done this

Since its origins in 1987, Red Bull has been a company that has played by its own rules. Nowhere is that more apparent than in its marketing practices. In fact, experts agree that in the beverage industry, Red Bull revolutionized marketing by selling an adrenaline-fueled lifestyle rather than a beverage itself. This approach has made the privately owned Austrian-based company one of the leading beverage marketers in the world, selling 7.5 billion cansabout one for every person in the worldin 2019, generating $7.8 billion in revenue and about $1 billion in profit. Red Bull has been so successful that it has created 12 billionaires in the company founders and their family members.

Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz established the companys unconventional market strategy when he created the original beverage. Energy drinks were known in Asia, but unheard of in Europe and the United States. Partnering with a Thai company, he took its energy-drink tonic, tweaked the recipe, added bubbles, and put it in a slick, slimline 8.3 ounce canslightly smaller than the typical soda can. With a hefty dose of caffeine and little-known ingredients like taurine and glucuronolactone, it provided a powerful effect and produced unique physical-energy and mental-clarity benefits. To highlight the energy-giving contents of the can, he settled on the slogan, Red Bull Gives You Wings. To make the product stand out even more and get beverage shoppers attention, he set a price more than double that of the typical beverage. Just like that, the energy drink category was born. And Red Bull was the only player.

Mateschitz launched the product in his native Austria, where sales were slow to take off at first. That isnt so surprising considering the elixir tasted terrible. But rather than make it taste better, Mateschitz turned to promotional techniques to build a super brand. All leading beverage companies spent plenty on mass media. Mateschitz did something much less conventional. He focused on event marketing. But Red Bull didnt just go around slapping its name on existing events that had been around for a while. Rather, it created its own events; events that exuded the extreme sports lifestyle. By doing so, Red Bull also aligned itself with a core part of youth culture.

Consider the first Red Bull-sponsored event, the Dolomitenmann. Held annually in the Dolomite mountains of Austria, the event is billed as the worlds toughest team relay race. The race begins with a mountain runner who runs 7.5 miles on a course that ascends nearly 6,000 feet in altitude. From mountain running, the race gives way to paragliding, mountain biking, and, finally, whitewater kayaking. Today, Red Bull isnt just a sponsor of this event. The company now owns the Red Bull Dolomitenmann.

Red Bull also has its name on a Formula 1 racing team, various soccer clubs, the Cliff Diving World Series, MotoGP Rookies Cup, Air Race, Crashed Ice, and Rampagea freeride mountain bike competition held near Zion National Park in southern Utah. It also sponsors events in music, dance, fashion, and art. To project these events beyond those who attend in person, Red Bull has its own record label and film production company, both of which derive content from Red Bull eventscontent that is distributed through Red Bulls own TV channel as well as its website and social media pages.

Spreading the Red Bull logo and brand image on events big and small has established the brands ethos, an ethos perhaps best illustrated by its hero content-making eventsmassive, highly promoted and anticipated events intended to reach as many viewers as possible. Consider the Red Bull Stratos project, in which extreme skydiver Felix Baumgartner stepped off a platform on a helium balloon at an altitude of 128,000 feet (more than 24 miles) above the earth. In doing so, Baumgartner became the first human to break the sound barrier as well as numerous other records in the process. Baumgartners capsule and his space-age jumpsuit were emblazoned with the Red Bull name and logo. More than 8 million people watched the event live on YouTubea record at the time. It was also shown on nearly 80 TV stations in 50 countries. And for months before and after the event, the millions of mentions of Baumgartner were inextricably associated with Red Bull. And that is how this small startup from Austria became not only the leader of the energy drink category, but became one of the most recognizable brands in the world.