Chaleo Yoovidhya, a founder of Red Bull, died this weekend. As an avid Red Bull fan, I knew I owed it to the man to dedicate my blog post to his wonderful creation.
Red Bull was started in the late 1980s in Austria and did not enter the U.S. for another decade. Since then, Red Bull has launched an aggressive international marketing campaign, mainly targeting extreme sports fans. It’s a campaign that has been extremely successful in transforming the world of extreme sports by gathering a long list of sports and athletes that previously did not have much of a common thread into one basket. Their creativity in projects such as Shaun White’s private half-pipe have brought further buzz to the drink.
What Red Bull has done so well is to create a global culture around their drink. Through their sponsorship of extreme sports, people associate the drink with energy and adrenaline, so that even those who do not participate in extreme sports can still fill their “extreme” desires.
