Case Study 11.1
Red Bull: The global market leader in energy drinks is considering further market expansion
November 16th, 2015
Executive Summary
Red Bull, an original in the energy drink market, was founded in 1984 by marketing guru Dietrich Mateschitz and formula developer Chaleo Yoovidhya. The product is often used for boosting energy, increasing focus, and as a mixer for alcoholic drinks. Red Bull is well recognised for its extreme marketing strategies. For example, Red Bull has a “Mobile Energy Team,” which is largely made up of university students. The Mobile Energy Team regularly travels from University to University to promote Red Bull and provide samples of the product. A second example of Red Bull’s marketing strategy
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Categorized as an energy drink, Red Bull was initially designed to “treat jet lag and boost energy for truck drivers” (Hollensen, 2012). In today's era, Red Bull is commonly used as an energy drink; like coffee, and as a mixer in alcoholic drinks, like Red Bull Wings and the Jägerbomb. This aligns with the company's focus on the younger generations of partygoers and post secondary students.
Red Bull’s marketing strategy is one of the key factors in their success. They avoid using any typical marketing strategies and instead created a new strategy. Red Bull created the Mobile Energy Team that consists primarily of young university students driving around in specially designed Mini Coopers with large Red Bull cans on top to attract the younger audience. The students are Red Bull’s team out in the field that attend different events and provide sampling of the energy drink. They even have the university Red Bull reps host parties with cases of Red Bull. These reps collect data from these parties and send it back to the company as a form of low cost market research. In 2010 Red Bull had 7,758 employees of which 5,000 were university students.
Red Bull is also known around the world for hosting extreme sporting events and sponsoring some 500 athletes. Over the years they have acquired four soccer teams, a Nascar team, and two Formula 1 racing teams. All of their teams have been quite successful and are financed from
• The Red Bull energy drink is a functional product developed especially for periods of increased mental and physical exertion.
In today's world, the name Red Bull and the slogan "Red Bull Gives You Wings has been inscribed into the minds of consumers around the globe. The popular energy drink, which seems to have sky-rocketed in US as well as world-wide sales is no miracle drug, although it does seem that way by the overflowing demand. Known to many as a coffee substitute, Red Bull is able to give its buyers that extra push or burst of energy to keep their day going due to its increased amounts of caffeine, without the nasty aftertaste of coffee. No doubt its marketing strategies have made a massive impact on its increased sales, but at its start, it is no lie to call Red Bull a self-made success. In a time where everyone is
market. With Red Bull’s various ad campaigns, the corporation uses a collaboration of extreme sports videos to market the incredible effects of their product. These differ from previous commercials, that use to be cartoony and display young adults, becoming cool and getting the hot girl, after consuming a delicious and nonaddictive energy drink. The transformation of red bull’s ads has shown that they are changing with pop culture by having what is considered most exciting to their core audience. These commercials show the true purpose of Red Bull corporation, selling children on the idea of consuming large quantities of caffeine, Taurine, B group vitamins, sugar, Alpine spring water in the Red Bull energy drink; are healthy and even make you into a fun and interesting
The company exemplifies the typical branding success story. Since its inception, Red Bull’s successful market strategy and ways of penetrating the lucrative energy drink market has demonstrated the company’s ability to think outside the competitive box through its innovative branding and sales and distribution strategy. Since the targeted’ age range is quite young, Red Bull employed unique methods to attract its customers. Amongst these non-conventional advertising routes, Red Bull used marketing « below the line », « buzz marketing », and « tribal marketing » (Brocooli, April 2012).
This document is part of the requirements of the Foundations of marketing course, the University of Newcastle. It is the first part of the marketing plan for Red Bull, the leader of energy drinks market.
This report was written to assess the company Red Bull and their energy drink Red Bull Energy Drink, in a manner in which the market/industry, environment, competitors, customers, and the brand were all analysed by using secondary research. A SWOT analysis was also conducted. Through this research and analysing, it was found that Red Bull is the dominating leader in the energy drink market and sells the most units of its product worldwide. However the company does have close competitors in Monster Energy Drink and Rock star Energy Drink. Although Red Bull has massive internal strengths in being leader in the market share and sponsorship of events, it also has weaknesses in lack of innovation and diversity. Their
If one has to analyze the profitability scheme of Red Bull Energy Drink, perhaps it can be safely said that it is in a very uncompromising situation. First and foremost, the stiff competition have paved the way for the emergence of many small time players (Helm 2005). With every bottled drink that aims to steal the limelight nowadays, Red Bull should capitalize more on its creativity and ingenuity—this is of course, in relation to advertising and marketing. The company should never disregard that Coca Cola and Pepsi are still top competitors (Helm 2005). More so, even if the two share equally different components as with Red Bull, still, it is evident that the two continue to partake into the market share. Meanwhile, the notion that energy drinks offers no variety in taste is an important marketing aspect that the company should take into full consideration (Laing 2005). In 2001, Pepsi had already released AMP Energy Drink (“Amp Energy Drink” n.d). It is the company’s maidens venture into the energy drink arena. Evidently, AMP’s raison d’ etre is to capitalize on Mountain Dew’s established image. The concept would be to introduce something new, yet very familiar (“Amp Energy Drink” n.d).
Market share and strategy - RedBull had dominated the market of energy drinks all over the world. Its main mission is to provide an energy drink made with natural ingredients which provide energy to man, women or children in their day to day life. It provides instant energy which helps college students or working people to maintain their energy and keep doing their work with full enthusiastic way.The Red Bull brand had created a great impact on the mind of its customers by its product results and pricing strategies which make it a larger energy drink on the market.("The Top 15 Energy Drink Brands.")
Red Bull receives a lot of publicity throughout the media, mainly to do with health issues. This causes controversy over the drink, and is considered a weakness. The media often report that Red Bull is unhealthy and damages your body. The media often targets parents, telling them that it is harmful for teenagers and children. This being Red Bulls target market has a very negative impact on the company.
In Brazil, there is not as much of a market for energy drinks as there is in places like the United States. Still, introducing 5-hour energy shots to Brazil could cause the desire for energy drinks to grow in that country. That would open up an entirely new market for energy drinks that could make millions or even billions of dollars for companies that manufacture energy drinks throughout the world. In order to clearly understand how marketing will take place in Brazil and the issues that must be addressed, there are four specific areas that will be considered here. These will be the social-cultural environment of Brazil, the economic environment, the political environment, and the technological environment. Since all of those areas play a role in how an energy drink could be marketed and how much success it might have, they all must be discussed before any decisions are made.
Red Bull’s target market is young adults and young professional (aged 16-22). If the number of people in this age – group form a small fragment of the country’s overall population, then entering such a market would be risky and not profitable enough. Red Bull has built a brand image of a youthful energy drink and hence it can be successful only in markets that have a large number of young people.
Red Bull has every brand element covered their name is a household name, Their logo is simple and unforgettable, They have numerous easy of communication whether it is though Television, movies, and sporting events. They use social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and youtube. They even have their own brand of music and magazine. All of these marketing elements allows Red Bull to reach their target audience on a mass sale and with social media make every interaction more personal. Red Bull Sponsers over 680 athletes, and host almost 1200 events a year. They have multiple slogans but the two most popular slogans are “ Red bull Gives you wings”, which was changed to “Red Bull Gives you wings” because of a class-action lawsuit, which began in January
The original formula for Red Bull was developed in 1964; however, the Red Bull company was not founded until 1984 after a merger between Dietrich Mateschitz, marketing guru, and Chaleo Yoovidhya, the owner of the Red Bull formula. Categorized as an energy drink, Red Bull was initially designed to “treat jet lag and boost energy for truck drivers” (Hollensen, 2012). In today's era, Red Bull is commonly used as an energy drink; like coffee, and as a mixer in alcoholic drinks, like Red Bull Wings and the Jägerbomb. This aligns with the company's focus on the younger generations of partygoers and post-secondary students.
Red Bull has been able to create and sustain a competitive advantage in the sports drink industry by setting a goal and expanding from it. Red Bull was launched in hopes of capitalizing on extreme sports such as snowboarding and
Red Bull has a large market share in the energy drink market and it is one of the most popular energy drinks in the world, this may help us to increase the demand for the product and maybe develop a new product within the same brand.