Bull Market | Outside Online

You Are Here:

Home >> Bull Market

Today's Question
What's the best way to learn to live off the land? answer

Is it better to buy or make a survival kit? answer

Today's Question
What country has the best ratings for eco-tourism? answer

What is the greenest rental car? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine April 2002

Page:

The Big Idea: CASE STUDY #1: Adventure Sells
Bull Market
How does a caffeine-loaded energy drink become a billion-dollar brand? RED BULL's creators inject their product with the adrenaline-by-association of extreme sports, and they never stop in the quest for buzz.

By Rob Walker

THE DAY WAS SO PERFECT, it looked like a commercial. The skies were blue, the sand was white, and the temperature was in the low seventies. Among a handful of people milling around on a broad stretch of Miami Beach shorefront, three guys were fussing with kiteboards—contraptions that consist of large, crescent-shaped parachutes rigged atop miniature surfboards. Two people wielded video cameras, and several more clutched little silver cans of the peppy refreshment that was paying for all this activity: Red Bull, the European "energy drink" that has become a phenomenon in the United States, largely on the strength of incredibly shrewd marketing.

Introduced here in 1997, Red Bull has spawned an entirely new category in the U.S. beverage business. Energy drinks accounted for $275 million in wholesale revenues last year, a whopping 65 percent of which went to Red Bull. Owners of the privately held Austrian company won't talk about its financials—or about much of anything else—but annual sales reportedly top $1 billion worldwide.

The Big Idea

Get the inside stories behind the gear and technology of the 21st century.

Red Bull is famously popular with college kids and nightclubbers, whom the company aggressively targets, but its most public tactic has been to wrap the drink in the sweaty mantle of extreme sports. To that end, Red Bull sponsors its own stunts and competitions in relatively obscure disciplines like street luge, waterfall kayaking, and freeskiing. The Red Bull Snowthrill of Alaska, for instance—held March 21-28 this year in Haines—gathers 12 freeskiers in the Chugach Mountains, pairing each with a photographer and offering cash prizes for the hairiest images.

In Miami late last December, the Red Bull forces were preparing something equally audacious: a small flotilla riding wind-powered kiteboards 88 miles from Key West to Varadero, Cuba, a distance that would set a new world record for the emerging sport. Kiteboarding blends elements of windsurfing and wakeboarding, and lately has gained critical mass as the equipment becomes more affordable. The rider stands on a four- to six-foot board, secured by footstraps or boots; he's propelled by a billowing kite, which is controlled by manipulating a handbar that guides 100-foot-long tethers. When the wind is right, people who know what they're doing can pull off astonishing 40-foot-high jumps and butter-smooth landings. People who don't can break their butts.

As I joined the beach crew, Kent Marinkovic, one of the kiteboarders, was talking to the cameras. Marinkovic is national sales manager for Adventure Sports, a Miami extreme-sports equipment retailer. He's 33, preppie-looking, very tan, and (to hear him tell it) very, very motivated. "I'm super-motivated," he said. "I don't get nervous."

Nearby was another kiteboarder, Neil Hutchinson, who co-owns a Fort Lauderdale-based watersports outfit called Kitesurf U.S.A., scorns vegetables of any kind, and smokes Marlboro Reds. He's British, 31, and looks like a leather-hided Peter O'Toole. When he took his turn explaining his equipment and tactics to the lens, he was immediately heckled by Oliver "Mowgli" Butsch, the third kiteboarder.

"Neil has tactics!" Butsch bellowed in mock disgust. "Buddy, I'm going over. I'm arriving. Fuck tactics!"

Butsch is Austrian, so it was hard not to think of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he spoke, which was often. He's a 38-year-old model with long hair, shades, and a tan even more stupendous than Hutchinson's. He charmed us all by ignoring his constantly trilling cell phone and explaining why: "The more you pick it up, the less people will call you. If you never answer—they want you!"

I took a seat under a beach umbrella and opened my first-ever can of Red Bull. You don't drink this stuff for the flavor—it's been described, accurately, as tasting like liquid Sweetarts—but for the effect. It's supposed to give you a boost. As the can puts it, Red Bull "Vitalizes body and mind."

Marinkovic joined me, and I asked about Red Bull's appeal. He stared at the can in his hand, thought about it, then said: "It makes a good mixer with vodka. And it's kind of a hangover cure."

Page: