Sports Marketing at Red Bull: taking the bull by the horns

Sport marketing is a discipline of marketing which focuses on promotion of sports, sporting events and also promoting products and services through sports and sporting events. The latter is more widespread, and there are a number of different ways by which a product can be marketed through a sport or sporting event. Some of the common channels for marketing through sport are sponsorship of a team, advertising through TV ads, sales promotions during a sporting event. Today, everything under the sun, from shoes and apparel to services like banking and financial solutions, are marketed through sport.

The likes of Nike, Adidas and Coke have a history of actively and successfully using sports to promote their products. They sponsor prominent athletes like Messi and Ronaldo; they are official sponsors of the Olympic Games; cricket, football, rugby World Cups, these brands are always there. Times are changing. There is a need to look at innovative ways of marketing your products leveraging the power of sports.

In recent times, an Austrian brand has done sport marketing very innovatively and taken the whole concept of marketing through sport to a different level. They don’t believe in signing sponsorship deals with teams to have their logos displayed on players’ jerseys or racing cars, instead they buy the teams outright. If that’s not outlandish enough, they have “invented” a host of sports and promoted their brand through it. If you still haven’t guessed which brand I am talking about, I am talking about the largest energy drink manufacturer in the world, Red Bull.

Red Bull gives you wings

Red Bull, the energy drink, is mainly targeted at the youth. The logo of Red Bull shows two raging bulls implying power; aggression personified. Also the colour red implies aggression too. Their slogan, “Red Bull gives you wings”, again signifies a sense of freedom. Overall, aggression, freedom, youthfulness are the key attributes portrayed by Red Bull. So that’s Red Bull’s brand identity; in other words that’s the total promise Red Bull makes to its customers.

Brand image on the other hand is the perception that consumers have of a particular brand. To be a successful brand, it is absolutely essential that there is a match between the brand identity and brand image. To ensure there is a match, Red Bull has launched a host of marketing initiatives, all with the aim of connecting with the youthful, adventure seeking target audience and driving home the message of what their brand stands for.

How Red Bull has gone about this brand building activity is a fascinating chapter in the annals of sport marketing.

The major marketing initiatives undertaken by Red Bull fall into two buckets – sponsoring teams through outright ownership, and sponsoring adventure sports and events. First, a look at the team ownership’s. Red Bull sponsors teams in racing and football; they are more popular in racing. The Jaguar racing team found a suitor in Red Bull when they put up their racing team for sale in 2004. Red Bull bought it and has since re-branded the team in a major way, leading it to three constructor’s championships. They also own the Scuderia Toro Rosso, another Formula One racing team.

Red Bull Racing

Red Bull’s decision to invest in Formula One is understandable. The key associations with Formula One are speed, aggression, style, adventure, fearlessness; all of which Red Bull wants its customers to see in its brand. They also sponsor football teams like the New York Red Bulls and FC Red Bull Salzburg to promote their brand. The jerseys of both the teams are all designed in line with Red Bull’s logo. Very different from other brands which sign sponsorship deals with clubs just to have their logos displayed on players’ jerseys.

Felix Baumgartner

The next category is where Red Bull has taken sports marketing by a storm. They sponsor adventure sports and events to promote their brand. The biggest of them all was the space diving project Red Bull Stratos, which saw the Austrian skydiver, Felix Baumgartner break the sound barrier by jumping from an altitude of 39 km. A giant leap indeed for Baumgartner and the world of sport marketing. The buzz that Red Bull was able to create around the event was incredible, as more than 8 million people watched the event live on Youtube.

This shows how they were able to bring in social media effectively to market their event, thereby demonstrating a shift from the traditional marketing ways to the newer, more powerful marketing channels. The beauty of the event was that it was very Red Bull centric. They took complete ownership of the event. Again they were able to establish a connect with the youth who love the adrenaline rush. The Red Bull slogan “gives you wings” fitted perfectly with Baumgartner’s record breaking dive.

Other events of Red Bull are also along similar lines though not as extreme as the space diving project. Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series is an international series of cliff diving events where divers jump from heights of around 30 metres. Red Bull Rampage is a free ride mountain bike competition where bikers perform risky stunts in their mountain bikes. Crashed Ice is another extreme winter sporting event which involves downhill skating on tracks with extremely steep turns and vertical drops. The interesting thing about all these events is that these events were created/ invented by Red Bull, or existing events were improvised by them to make it more adventurous and risky.

And in doing all this, they are able to reinforce their brand values to their target audience. And the publicity they are able to generate through these events for their brand is immense. Many of these spectacles would not have been possible without Red Bull. And they take immense pride in making these events tick. As a Red Bull official put it – “We don’t sponsor Crashed Ice. We are Crashed Ice. We produce it. We own it. We work with the athletes. We make it happen.” All these activities have raised the awareness of the brand and have also translated into higher sales for the company.

Red Bull Rampage

Red Bull has redefined marketing in sports in a major way. It is no longer about paying exorbitant amounts of money to sponsor an event; it is about taking ownership to an event. Whatever Red Bull does is creative, energetic and exciting. All these fit perfectly with their brand identity. They have never lost focus on their brand identity throughout the course of their marketing activities. That’s the beauty of this whole marketing exercise.

Actually, it does seem Red Bull invests in projects that are bigger than itself, a very adventurous thing to do. These are areas that many brands wouldn’t even venture into. But that’s what Red Bull is all about – adventure. Their commitment has seen them succeed in their adventurous sport marketing initiatives. In the field of sport marketing, Red Bull has indeed taken the bull by the horns.