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Red Bull Marketing Plan

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How Red Bull woke up the teen market
It looks (and tastes) like medicine, but it still conquered the soft drinks trade. Now the edgy pick-me-up is moving into the grown-up world of motor racing. John Arlidge reports

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John Arlidge
The Observer, Sunday 5 December 2004
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At this time of year fallen leaves shroud the carefully planned suburbs of Milton Keynes. Mist drifts in from the fields. The posh car firms - Mercedes, Volkswagen, Audi - whose UK head offices ring the Buckinghamshire town are gearing down for the winter. But last week the end-of-year gloom was lifted by the arrival of a most unlikely new inhabitant.

A bronzed and energetic Austrian, who has made a billion-pound fortune selling a drink …show more content…

The health and energy drinks market is the fastest-growing sector of the burgeoning soft drinks market, doubling in size every year to reach £1.5bn last year. Red Bull is the market leader and its revenues rose 10 per cent to £1bn last year, on sales of 1.5bn cans. Vodka and Red Bull is still the most popular alcoholic drink for under-20s.

The pick-me-up 's 'anti-brand brand ' status explains its rapid success, argues Nirmalya Kumar, senior analyst at the London Business School. 'Red Bull has never done anything in a conventional way. It has not used normal advertising, nor marketing. When it sponsors events or sports, it tends to go for minority ones. '

While the no-logo generation is happy, the premium price on cans - more than £1, compared with 50p for Coke or Pepsi - has kept the money flowing in to the firm 's Alpine HQ. But what is an irreverent Austrian doing in one of Britain 's newest towns and why is he spending a fortune buying his way into a big-brand sport in crisis?

Frustrated by the dominance of business interests over sport and the continued dominance of Ferrari, some of the big F1 teams are threatening to leave the F1 circus and form a new competition. Some observers say Red Bull is keeping pace with its core market as it gets older. 'Formula One has the kind of dangerous, edgy, masculine image that suits Red Bull, ' says Richard Hall, chairman of the drinks consultancy Zenith International. 'The early adopters who made it what

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