On February 2nd, 2011, my friend Ross wrote about his love for extreme sports and the genius marketing people working for Red Bull. He mentioned that by hosting and sponsoring all the extreme sports events and even having their own Red Bull athletes, the company has been able to charge above average price for their energy drinks.
I completely agree with Ross on the strategy that the company is taking. Red Bull has made the transition from a Proper noun to a common noun. For example, Kleenex is now used as a common word whenever someone is referencing to a paper tissue. Red Bull now has reached that state where people reference it as all energy drinks. I am not sure and in fact, quite intrigued by why the others have not tried to imitate them. Monster and Full throttle are the main competitors belonging to Coke and Pepsi respectively, they have access to great marketing budgets. Why have they not marketed themselves as extremely energized drink yet? Also, would they eventually take over Red Bull’s market share? By being the “face” for energy drinks, Red Bull took a lot of the hit form the negative publicity, ranging from accidents to death of teenagers from similar products. Which gave others a chance to be a head of the game and introduced new lines of drinks that are labeled as from “natural products”. This is something that Red Bull will struggle with for they have only one products with a very strong image to vary from.