Let’s take a moment to discuss how gret marketing turned one of the worst tasking beverages ever concocted into a multi-billion dollar behemoth.
I’m of course talking about Red Bull. The product that…come on…you know what it does…everyone knows…
Depending on different estimates, the privately owned company is worth somewhere between $20 and $90 billion, ostensibly off the “strength” of a single beverage.
Red Bull vs. Genuine Beverage Behemoth
It terms of size, let’s compare Red Bull to Coca-Cola, which is worth upwards of $300 billion.
In addition to Coke and its many variations, Coca-Cola also owns:
In contrast, here are the drink brands owned by Red Bull:
There are of course different flavors of Red Bull, just like there are different flavors of Sprite and Powerade and Simply lemonade and Minute Maid juices, etc. But when comparing these two companies, how can Red Bull’s value be anywhere close to the vicinity of Coca-Cola’s?
Red Bull Made Itself More than a Beverage
While Coca-Cola’s portfolio consists of numerous other beverages, Red Bull’s is something else altogether.
In addition to producing a drink, Red Bull the company owns racing teams and soccer teams and hockey teams and a record label and a film production company and more.
What really makes them worthy of this article is that owning sports teams isn’t so much a part of their business model as it is a key component of their marketing.
Coca-Cola is worth so much money because it owns so many companies. Red Bull owns so many teams and companies because it’s worth so much money. Red Bull owns racing teams so that races can be peppered with their logo. When a BMX rider skyrockets off a jump wearing Red Bull gear, it’s like Red Bull has nearly literally given him wings.
I don’t want to minimize the massive marketing efforts of Coca-Cola that got them large enough to buy all those other brands. But I also don’t want to lose sight of how Red Bull is a single brand. What they’ve accomplished is extraordinary. The drink is objectively awful, right? If you tell me you like the taste, you’re lying. And it wasn’t the world’s first energy drink, either. Instead, Red Bull built a multi-billion dollar brand from exceptional, creative, genuinely unique and especially gimmicky marketing, most notably with the famous space jump.
This highlights the power of marketing. Great marketers — with enough creativity and a worthy budget — really can get people to consume anything.
Your product or service is almost certainly superior to Red Bull. So the next time you’re questioning whether marketing makes a difference, think back to this post, and how gross and grossly overpriced red slurp is worth billions.
And while you’re here, if you could use a little Red Bullian jolt of energy into your digital marketing efforts, my colleagues and I at Arc Intermedia are really, really, really good at it. Want to have a chat about anything that’s been vexing you?
