Spring exam 2012
Red Bull – The Anti-brand brand
Question 1:
Red Bull was launched in Austria in 1987, and in the 25 years that has passed since then, many things have happened that could and should affect the way Red Bull markets and brands its product as opposed to how it was done in the years after the launch.
All though Red Bull was launched in 1987, it was not until 1992 that the company began expanding its distribution – first to other European countries, Hungary, Slovenia (1992), Germany and Switzerland (1994), and then in 1997 to the US (Kumar et al 2005: 3). In the 1990s, the general consumer trend in the markets that Red Bull entered into was that the more you spend the better. In many countries, especially in the US, the 90s was the decade of the consumer, and it was a decade where advertising and branding really became a point of differentiation for many companies – a strong brand became synonymous with success (Clifton 2009: 119). The current financial environments in Red Bull’s core markets are a lot gloomier than what was the case in the 90s, but interestingly enough, energy drinks was the one soft drinks category apparently unaffected by consumers spending less money. In 2010-2011 Red Bull outperformed the overall soft drinks market in both value and volume, and this in spite of the fact that energy drinks are priced higher than most other soft drinks. In conclusion, it seems that Red Bull’s target consumers are not as affected by the economic environment as one might think (Euromonitor 2012d).
The biggest change, however, that has occurred since the 1990s, is, without much doubt, the expansion of the internet. From 2005-2010 alone, the number of internet users in the world, rose from 1 billion to 2 billion, and the number is expected to almost double come 2020 (Euromonitor 2011d). In the beginning of the 1990s the internet was still fairly new to the common consumer, and in the US for
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