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How Red Bull Dominates the US Energy Drink Market

The corporate branding strategy that led to selling one in four drinks

Shawn Kong
Better Marketing
8 min readFeb 19, 2020

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Photo by Alexander Sinn on Unsplash

About Red Bull

After visiting Thailand in the 1980s, Austrian-born Dietrich Mateschitz developed the Red Bull energy drink and cofounded Red Bull GmbH with Chaleo Yoovidhya, a Thai business tycoon who developed Krating Daeng. They sold their very first can of Red Bull on April 1, 1987, in its home market of Austria.

With more than 32 years of history, Red Bull marketed itself through advertising, events (Red Bull BC One, Red Bull Flugtag, Red Bull Rampage), music (Red Bull Music Academy), sports teams’ ownership (Infiniti Red Bull Racing, New York Red Bulls, FC Red Bull Salzburg, Team OG) and endorsements (Eminem, Shaun White).

Source: Red Bull’s event page

Red Bull has now become the leading energy drink brand in the U.S. with 24.9% of the market share (dollar sales) and is one of the world’s leading brands in energy drinks, selling 7.5 billion cans worldwide in 2019.

Its trademark logo, the two red-colored bulls with yellowish highlights along with the bolded red words “Red Bull,” can be seen…

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Better Marketing
Better Marketing

Published in Better Marketing

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Shawn Kong
Shawn Kong

Written by Shawn Kong

2 x Top writer | Shares stories & insights from marketing, business & life, support and follow — https://medium.com/@shawn.kong/membership

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