RUNNING HEAD:RED BULL MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Red Bull Marketing Management



Red Bull Marketing Management

Introduction

The brand Red Bull was founded by the Austrian Dietrich Mateschitz in 1987. The advertising expert developed the basic idea in Hong Kong. Whilst travelling on official business he discovered the traditional and stimulating tonic drinks. As he has never seen a drink like this in Europe, the product left an impression on him. Only 2 years later, in 1984, Mateschitz founded the Red Bull GmbH, refined the taste of the drink, developed a unique marketing concept and first launched the product in his home country in 1987. Mateschitz had created a totally new division of the lemonade market: the energy drink. In 1992 he expanded to Hungary. Red Bull not only gave wings to its drinkers, moreover it got wings by itself. Right from the beginning, it went particularly well with young customers. In this paper we analysed the Red Bull Marketing Management.

Red Bull a successful Brand

The world's number one energy drink and category founder Red Bull is an extremely lucrative business. Although the canned drink is the only product the company produces, although they only sell it in very small portions, and although these mini-cans have an exorbitant price, the prestigious, functional drink can record an enormous number of loyal customers aged between 15 and 25 (Kumar et al., 2004). This is especially remarkable as that segment, usually, is neither a highly faithful customer group, nor has great financial means on its disposal. And yet, the company has been noting down incredible profits for many years. Correspondingly, the following expressive figures illustrate clearly what a strong business the Red Bull GmbH is: Today, sales are registered in more than 100 countries, and the company progressively and successfully targets new markets around the world. In 2004, they gained an increase of profits of 41 percent in the USA, 53 percent in the Middle East, 44 percent in Australia and even 328 percent in Central America. Thus, Red Bull had a turnover of 1.261 billion Euros in 2003. Seiser (2004) reports that Red Bull can afford to put no less than 30 percent of their profits into the marketing sector. All in all, Mateschitz' corporation has a company value of 4 billion Euros and provides work for about 1,850 employees.

Red Bull is a private company. This means that Mateschmitz and his team are free of financial pressure from investors ...