Bull Market | Outside Online

Outside Magazine April 2002

Page:

The Big Idea: CASE STUDY #1: Adventure Sells
Bull Market

MAYBE IT WAS THE RED BULL, but the beach scene struck me as odd. It wasn't the apparent incongruity of a "fitness" drink that's used as a party potion. Nor was it the maddening uncooperativeness of Red Bull's PR flacks, which I'd experienced from the moment I first contacted the company. (I'd originally been invited to ride in one of the boats escorting the kiteboarders to Cuba. Then I was disinvited. Then the trip was postponed and I was invited again. But it was postponed again; from there I entered an information-free loop of shifting dates and contingencies. We finally hit on a compromise: I'd go only as far as Key West.)

No, what seemed unaccountably weird was that this was a marketing event no one knew about. There was no advance press release. There was no Red Bull tent set up to attract local news crews. This was one of the most outrageous publicity stunts I'd ever heard of—kiteboarding to a nation that's under a strict U.S. trade embargo—and it seemed to be happening in a vacuum. How could this possibly make sense?

Well, I have a theory, and to explain it I should probably clutter the language with an invented word that summarizes my thinking. So here it is: murketing.

Murketing, as you might guess, derives from murky. Usually the wizards of branding want to be extremely clear about what their product is for and who's supposed to buy it.

"We live in an emotional society, and extreme sports deliver on our need to, to...vibrate in a way," says branding expert Marc Gobé. "Red Bull is one of the first products I've seen that delivers on that energy."

Red Bull does just the opposite. Everything about the company and its sole product is intentionally vague, even evasive. While the drink appears to be targeted specifically at someone—extreme athletes, ravers, cosmopolitan students—the brand identity is actually pretty nebulous. You could argue that what Red Bull drinkers have in common is a taste for the edgy and faintly dangerous. But what does this really mean?

I was certainly murkified the first time I came across Red Bull. It was in a bar in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the city I live in. The cans are small (8.3 ounces), usually cost $2 or more, and feature a silver-and-blue pattern and two red bulls about to head-butt each other. "With Taurine," it says on the front. The drink also contains 80 milligrams of caffeine. Red Bull turned out to be fairly easy to buy in the Quarter, which didn't make much sense, given that the Quarter is arguably the most unathletic neighborhood in the world. So I had questions. How did an energy drink find its way into the company of such good-time classics as the Hurricane and the Hand Grenade? What's "taurine"? Why is the can so puny, while costing three or four times more than a 12-ounce Mountain Dew? And what's with those rumors about what else is in Red Bull?

I'll get to all that. But first, some Red Bull background.

The company is headquartered in Fuschl, Austria, a lakeside village outside of Salzburg. The official corporate creation saga says it was invented by a Fuschl resident and entrepreneur named Dietrich Mateschitz. Traveling in Asia in the 1980s, Mateschitz supposedly came across a syrupy tonic favored by ricksha drivers, and discovered that its key ingredient was an amino acid called taurine, which occurs naturally in human and animal bile. He adapted it to a palatable drink and launched Red Bull in his home country in 1987.

Not much else is known about Mateschitz. Red Bull gets its share of bad publicity because there have been deaths allegedly associated with its use as an alcohol mixer at raves and other party settings. Mateschitz avoids such nagging issues by almost never being interviewed, and my requests to speak with him were turned down flat.

"He doesn't like the media," offered Emmy Cortes, Red Bull's U.S. spokeswoman. But she assured me he is "a very charismatic gentleman" in his "midfifties," single, and "kind of a playboy." Here she added an impish laugh, which seemed a little practiced. "Not even that many people in the company have met—or even seen a picture of—Dietrich. He's almost like a myth within the company." Again with the laugh. This coyness, she explained, was of a piece with "the mystique of the brand."

"Mystique" comes up a lot when Red Bull is discussed by marketing experts, who seem to adore it. "We live in an emotional society," purrs Marc Gobé, president and CEO of the New York- based branding firm Desgrippes Gobé Group and author of a marketing tome called Emotional Branding. "Extreme sports deliver on that need to, to... vibrate, in a way. Red Bull is one of the first products I've seen that delivers on that energy."

But the word most commonly used about Red Bull is "stealth." When the company came to the United States five years ago, it did not roll out a big, flashy ad campaign or buy massive, coast-to-coast distribution. Instead Red Bull's operatives slunk from city to city, using "street teams" to murmur the good word to all-important, trendsetting Gen Y types. According to Nancy Koehn, a Harvard Business School professor and author of the book Brand New, these "cosmopolitan" young people view Red Bull as a product of the "global village."

There's truth in all this, but I had to wonder: Are the experts describing the mystique of Red Bull, or are they helping create it? Because Red Bull's street vibe didn't just happen. According to Brandweek, in 2000 the company spent $100 million marketing its "stealth" brand in the United States alone—bankrolling events, installing displays in nightclubs, and so on. Red Bull stokes demand through a network of what it calls "mobile energy teams," which hand out free samples. In New Orleans, the local team tools around in a super-modified Suzuki Vitara, all done up with the company logo and a big silver can mounted on the back. Cortes said these teams show up at places where people might "need a boost," like gyms, office buildings, and construction sites.

"It's rare for them to hit a bar," she assured me. She also claimed that less than 10 percent of the company's sales come from bars and nightclubs—though she admits that the first place in New Orleans to sell Red Bull, a year and a half ago, was a bar on Bourbon Street.

In a random survey, I spoke to a few Tulane University students about Red Bull, and (surprise!) they thought of it only as a bar drink. One typical consumer was Kaytie Pickett, a dormitory resident assistant who heard about Red Bull from sorority girls. The essence of their message: "It's legal speed."

"It's really a kind of fashionable drink," she said. "You see the fashionable sorority girls buying their can of Red Bull with their Marlboro Lights. It's like: 'Look, I can afford to pay $3 for this ridiculous drink.'"

Which leads to the first iron rule of murketing: Stay silent about what it is that makes you different. Someone else will eventually supply the answers.

Page: