Red Bull has used the same marketing for 20 years. This is the power of a well thought out brand that stays the course.

Dave Young:

Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[OG Law Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. And I’m Dave Young, and that’s Stephen Semple, over at the other microphone. You may not be able to see him if you’re listening on a podcast. That makes sense, doesn’t it? So the only clue he gave me as the countdown timer started to what this episode is all about is he said, “Gives you wings.” I’m like, well, obviously we’re going to be talking about Red Bull. I didn’t miss that one, did I?

Stephen Semple:

No, you got it right. Isn’t that amazing how powerful that is?

Dave Young:

“Gives you wings.” Yeah. I mean, we tell people all the time. That’s just branding. That’s just becoming known for some things, right? And the longer you do it, and the more consistently you do it, the easier it is for people to know you by a slogan, “Gives you wings” or “Ba-ba-pa-pa-pa,” right?

Stephen Semple:

“I’m lovin’ it.”

Dave Young:

Just a few notes. And now all of a sudden, 60, 70 years of advertising is rolled up into five little notes in your head that brings back all those associations. So Red Bull, man, they’re everywhere.

Stephen Semple:

Well, and they have not changed their advertising in 20 years. Like the whole using the drawings and it gives you wings. They have stuck with that for over 20 years. So when you say doing it over and over again, here’s the other part where I got to give them real credit on the “Gives you wings.” I could see somebody going, yeah, but it doesn’t give you wings. We all get it.

Dave Young:

That’s magical thinking. Come on.

Stephen Semple:

Magical thinking. And that’s why it’s powerful. And then the other thing they did is they misspelt wings. They have the extra I in there.

Dave Young:

Never even noticed that.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. And the reason why they did that is it makes it trademarkable.

Dave Young:

Okay. So the chicken wing places can’t infringe on them, right?

Stephen Semple:

Well, if something’s a common phrase, you can’t prevent other people from doing it. So they do that little thing and he said, you hardly notice it. So there’s a bunch of little clever things that they’ve done.

Dave Young:

Well, take us back to the beginning.

Stephen Semple:

I just want to talk to you about how big in 2023, 12 billion in sales.

Dave Young:

Man.

Stephen Semple:

But to date, they’ve sold a hundred billion units, 12 billion in sales last year. And you think about it, they really have one product. Sure they’ve got a sugar-free one, and every once in a while they do some seasonal ones, but pretty much they’re one product.

Dave Young:

Is caffeine.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. And it’s these little 8.4 ounce cans and actually started in rural Thailand. I’m going to butcher this guy’s name, because it’s a Thai name, I don’t know Thai, but was a pharmacist, Chaleo Yoovidhya, I think is how you pronounce his name. And again, I may have that completely, completely wrong. But here’s the deal.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

He’s a pharmacist. He has a pharmacy in urban Thailand, and it’s 1976. And what he notices is there’s these energy tonics coming from Japan, and they’re really popular in the cities. And he grew up in a poor rural area and he notices these imports are kind of expensive. And he decides to make his own version of it. And the first name of it is Red Gaur, which is wild cow. There’s these cows, these wild cows in Thailand that have kind of this reddish color to them, and that’s the first name of a product. And today it’s pretty much the same formulation with a little bit of sugar. And the early version wasn’t carbonated, where now the new version is carbonated, but it hasn’t varied much from the original version. And what he’s doing is he goes out into rural Thailand and he starts giving away the product to truckers. So he hangs at these truck stops. The first thing he does is he starts giving away bottles of this product. It was originally bottled.

Dave Young:

Classic street drug dealer business model.

Stephen Semple:

Right. And recognizes truckers are working these long hours and all this other stuff, so that’s-

Dave Young:

First one’s free, baby.

Stephen Semple:

First one’s free. He starts giving it away, and it starts catching on in popularity. Now, he also decides to do this, there’s a really popular sport in Thailand called Muay Thai, right? Which is basically, you find it today in MMA fighting.

Dave Young:

Oh, okay.

Stephen Semple:

And it’s everywhere in Thailand. So he decides to sponsor a bunch of those events.

Dave Young:

We’re already seeing the business model.

Stephen Semple:

We’re already seeing the business models. Samples-

Dave Young:

Samples and high performance sporting.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Now, here’s where things get really fun. Enter creating [inaudible 00:05:48]. And he is visiting Thailand. So his job is he works as an international product manager for shampoos and toothpaste. And he’s kind of bored with his job. And he’s an interesting guy. He took 10 years getting his degree and he says, part of the reason why it took him 10 years to get his degree, because he was having too much fun at university. So he’s kind of this fun guy and he’s this international director for shampoo and toothpaste, and he’s kind of bored with his job. And he enters a drug store where he sees this energy drink, and he tries it. And he’s like, “Wow, this is pretty amazing.”

And when he returns home, he decides to read about energy drinks and he sees that they’re only in Asia. And he decides, I want to bring this to the west. And he goes through his list of suppliers, and he discovers that the guy who has this energy drink is on his supplier list. Because remember, he’s also a pharmacist, has a pharmacy in Thailand.

Dave Young:

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And so he calls him up. Calls him up and says, we should do a partnership and we should bring this to the west. Quits his job. Throws a half a million of his own bucks into it. They start this business together. Now the first thing is he wants to change the name to something a little bit that translates into English and has American sounding. And he decides, let’s call it Red Bull. Instead of Red Gaur, Red Bull. Put together focus groups. They all hate it. They think it tastes terrible.

Dave Young:

Sure. I mean, that’s like part of their whole deal, right? This is not…

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Now one of the things that they do do they find that when you add carbonation to it, it tastes better. So they have a little bit of sugar and a little bit of carbonation, and they made it the taste kind of bearable.

Dave Young:

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

So they spend three years doing on that. And then the other thing he decides is they want to premium price this. And so they design this sleek aluminum can, and they also decide to make it stand out. Instead of 12 ounce, which is what everybody else is doing, let’s do 8.4 ounces. Tiny can.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Now here’s the other thing a tiny can does.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

[Empire Builders Ads]

Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Semple:

Now, here’s the other thing a tiny can does, especially for an energy drink. What does a tiny can for an energy drink do? Conveys, there’s a lot of power in this [inaudible 00:08:58].

Dave Young:

Absolutely. This is potent stuff.

Stephen Semple:

This is potent stuff.

Dave Young:

I mean, you know who stole the lesson from them and made an even smaller one is the 5-hour Energy people.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Right?

Stephen Semple:

Yeah.

Dave Young:

This is even smaller than Red Bull. Be careful.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Be careful. And so they hire an agency, and the agency comes up with the whole idea of Red Bull gives you wings, which is just brilliant. The first cartoon uses Da Vinci. We’re going to come back to Da Vinci in a minute. So it’s 1987. They launched it by giving out samples in ski resorts. And then they decide to take Red Bull to universities, but they really have no ad budget. So what they do is they find the popular people on campus. So they steal this idea from the beer companies. And they give away free product and they throw parties. They give the popular people money to throw a party and give away product. Then they also decide to start giving away free product in bars, which also stimulates bartenders starting to make drinks with Red Bull. Here’s the part that they do really well. When they give free product to a bar, they go into the bar ahead of time. They spread empty cans of Red Bull around the bar.

Dave Young:

I love that so much. This is like priming the tip jar, right? You’re playing the piano at the bar, nobody’s going to tip you if the tip jar is empty.

Stephen Semple:

Right.

Dave Young:

Because nobody feels like they’re joining in.

Stephen Semple:

Nobody goes to a bar if there’s not a line-up outside the bar.

Dave Young:

So there’s a bunch of empty Red Bull cans and nobody near them. You’re like, these people drank the Red Bull and they’re out doing fun stuff now.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. What’s this Red Bull? I’m seeing it everywhere. I should try one.

Dave Young:

This is so brilliant.

Stephen Semple:

Isn’t that brilliant? Isn’t that brilliant? First year, they sell a million cans. Sales double the next year. Year three, 4 million cans. So they go from 1 million to 2 million to 4 million. And then they go into the whole thing of sponsoring events. And again, what they do is they pick events that are high energy, niche like skating downhill and crap along that lines, that have a little bit of danger to them.

Dave Young:

Anything with a parachute, anything where you’re jumping off a ramp. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. But the fun one is in 1992, even before they do that, because it’s really ’97 is when they lean into the whole events thing. But 1992, remember I said we’re going to come back to Da Vinci?

Dave Young:

Okay. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

They invent a sport called Flugtag.

Dave Young:

Oh, Flugtag.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Which is basically you build a flying machine and you launch it down a ramp and into a river, and the one that flies the furthest basically wins, and it has to be human power to whatnot. And so basically the things people are making are variations of Da Vinci crap.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Remember I was coming back to Da Vinci? Yeah. And it becomes super, super popular. This crazy event. You can it on YouTube. And it was literally inspired by the drawings of Da Vinci.

Dave Young:

Nice.

Stephen Semple:

And if you think about it, it’s got whimsy and it’s got energy in it, touch of danger. Fits their brand, represents energy. ’97, they come to United States and they start sponsoring events, but initially avoid mainstream events. Eventually they end up going into mainstream events like they own now four soccer clubs, and they own an F1 team. They originally started with these small events. 2012 is a big breakthrough moment for them, where they sponsor the guy that does the world record, the free jump-

Dave Young:

Oh. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

… where he goes up in the balloon 24-

Dave Young:

Trying to think his name.

Stephen Semple:

… miles in the air. But here’s the other part that they figured out with that. That was streamed on YouTube. 8 million people watch this live on YouTube. So they also started to figure out as you don’t need to use mainstream media, if you’re doing these crazy things. People will find you. After that, sales jumped 13% in the next six months.

Dave Young:

Amazing. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Now, they hit a little bit of bump in the road, that initially was a challenge for them that became better later, is that a kid died drinking Red Bull. And so there was a period there, where there was a few countries that actually banned Red Bull.

Dave Young:

Because you drink too many. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Now, they eventually managed to get that ban to go away, but of course when the ban went away, it came back stronger, right? Because with young male customers, because this thing’s dangerous, right?

Dave Young:

Yeah. Of course.

Stephen Semple:

The part that I find that’s incredible is they’ve remained very focused. There would be this temptation to, we see this all the time with businesses, let’s extend the brand. Let’s go in the other things. No, they’ve stayed very focused. One or two products in the energy space.

Dave Young:

Well, what I love too is they’ve stayed, man, they’re still dancing with the one that brought them, right? You can’t watch a video on YouTube or Instagram or TikTok or anywhere that’s anybody sort of risking their lives in some kind of a organized way without there being a Red Bull logo on the airplane, the signage right there.

Stephen Semple:

The guys in those crazy squirrel flying suits-

Dave Young:

Oh, sure.

Stephen Semple:

… [inaudible 00:14:18] one of them will be Red Bull.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Absolutely. And they have done mainstream mass media, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

I remember seeing ads for Red Bull, and that’s where we got to know the, it’ll give you wings.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

That helped spread it. But honestly, that’s probably their move to get more into the mainstream folks that are into energy drinks that are just working nine to five office jobs or students that are doing exciting things just to get the attention of the people that just need to stay awake. But the people that love the action sports already know about them.

Stephen Semple:

Right.

Dave Young:

And they still lean into that.

Stephen Semple:

So you think about it, they purposely picked a packaging that was different than everybody else’s. They purposely picked something that looked premium. They then attached it to the cool kids on campus and the parties. And then they went to bars, where they gave it away for free, but created this feeling that it was everywhere by scattering the empty cans around. Then they invented their own whimsical sport that has a little bit of danger because of course you crash and everybody crashes into the river. And then sponsoring other dangerous non-mainstream sports. And as you said, we run into this all the time, where people will say, well, how long should this campaign run? Forever.

Dave Young:

Yeah. As long as people are willing to do crazy, skillful things that we all want to watch. Red Bull. Honestly, Stephen, they’ve driven the development of more risky games. I don’t think snowboarding would be what it is without Red Bull.

Stephen Semple:

No. And they will even-

Dave Young:

We’d just still be skiing and learning on the bunny slopes, and that’d be kind of it.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. And if you go even to a small freestyle snowboarding event, it’s sponsored by Red Bull.

Dave Young:

Yeah. Of course.

Stephen Semple:

Right? But they have stuck to what they’ve danced with one who brung them. They have stuck with that and really owned that space. And they are, I think the next biggest one is, if I remember right, is Monster Energy. And they’re like, they are the 900 pound gorilla in the space. No one has really been able to make a dent in Red Bull.

Dave Young:

And the ones that do are the ones that are big sodas behind them anyway, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yes. And they now do cliff diving and stunt flying teams and soapbox derbies and all of that other stuff. Now, one of the ones that ended up becoming really interesting for them is how they got into F1. That was a Ford team. And Ford had been losing money forever on F1, and they bought that team for a dollar.

Dave Young:

For a dollar?

Stephen Semple:

For a dollar.

Dave Young:

I’d have given a dollar. I wouldn’t have had the money to get them to the next race but…

Stephen Semple:

And now they’ve turned that team. In fact, what’s really interesting is, their F1 team has become so successful. Other people sponsor their team and they’re making money off of their team.

Dave Young:

Sure. And honestly, so I’m an F1 fan to the point of I love the HBO series Drive to Survive. That got me into F1, but I don’t watch the races on the weekends. I wait for the series to come out to see how everything, I love how they’ve woven a story together.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

But the Red Bull story, right? They’re always there.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Yeah. What a fun brand.

Stephen Semple:

And if you think about it-

Dave Young:

Literally a fun brand.

Stephen Semple:

It is literally. And that’s the thing. At no point have they said, we’re fun. They just are fun.

Dave Young:

You’re not going to find a-

Stephen Semple:

They just are fun.

Dave Young:

… Red Bull book club.

Stephen Semple:

No. What’s interesting, this playbook, especially of sponsoring fringe things because it’s less expensive, go back to Swatch. That’s what Swatch did in the early days. Now remember, it wasn’t sporting events, it would be break dancing events. It was artistic things because Swatch was fun and artistic, right? Same playbook, same playbook, same idea. So this is the whole find your tribe, find your niche. And when you’ve got a winning campaign, run it forever. Run it forever. There’s this temptation to change it, don’t.

Dave Young:

Lean in. That’s it.

Stephen Semple:

Lean in and own it. Lean in and own it. So that’s kind of the story of Red Bull.

Dave Young:

I appreciate you bringing that. What an empire.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. It all started giving away drinks to truck drivers and [inaudible 00:19:04].

Dave Young:

Yeah. All right. Well, thank you for joining us on the Empire Builders Podcast.

Stephen Semple:

All right. Thanks, David.

Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big fat juicy five star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.