Event Marketing – the Lessons from Red Bull Strategy

in that location ar few labels that can offer more(prenominal) lessons in how to uprise the following generation of marketing than sanguine forge. Focusing their strategy on earn media, cultural integration and value excogitation, blushful falsifys approach is pi unriv each(prenominal)edering, and a template that more faults would love to follow. How ever its to a fault proven a difficult strategy to replicate, specifically because nevertheless how divers(prenominal) it is from the traditional marketing model. Its unquestionably not just nearly assistanting a couple of youth events and calling it a day.The scale of ruby-red craps commitment to non-traditional marketing is unprecedented. As far tail end as a decade ago, violent tomentum was spending more than 80% of their significant marketing bud bring down on non-measured media. Thats on the whole inverse to the traditional marketing formula of focusing on encase communication messages and the broadcast me dia to spread them. Core to Red dirts success has been their unique strategy of focusing on mark-geted events.It struck me that mavin of the best ways to make the plosive consonant al intimately what it takes to seriously be at their level and at this game was to show the scale they ar operating on. Creating vs sponsoring After sponsoring a handful of existing events early in the brands history, Red Bull made a strategical decision to create their own events and piss followed this direction consistently ever since. This is a hugely important unalikeiator for them, and sets them a league asunder from sponsor brands . Early investment becomes equity As a sponsor brand, the more important and popular the event becomes, the more it costs. However Red Bulls initial investment in creating the event quickly starts paying compound interest, and as the event grows in stature they draw in all of the rewards while costing them only the maintenance of re-running the event. 2. Sole -branding Most man-sized events harbor their platinum, gold and silver sponsors. How much are brands really acquiring out of these sponsorships?And if you want to distinguish your brand by putting your separate on the event, be prepared to shell out mega bucks. Red Bull on the other hand is the title sponsor for every one of these ninety events, and their branding is present and seamlessly integrated into the event rather than tacked on and diluted amongst a hundred other sponsors. There is no heading who is putting on the event and responsible for bringing it to everyone and making it happen.3. genuineness and credibility For me there is a big difference with a brand simply paying to have their logo attached to some function, and with a brand who puts their energy, resources, and creativeness to work in bringing some social occasion to life themselves, even if it is of hunt down delivered behind the scenes by a host of event and activation agencies. Theres a several(predi cate) level of commitment involved, and a different type of au indeedticity and credibility is conferred to the brand as a result. in(predicate) creation signals commitment to and copious understanding of the space, whereas anyone can pay to logo-ize something.Im not enjoining sponsorship is always a bad thing by any stretch, entirely Id argue it definitely lacks the same resonance with the interview. 4. Underground up There is something powerful about how so many of these Red Bull events started out small and topical anaesthetic, and have grown to be big and hugely important and influential amongst the athletes and their fans. Athletes themselves say voluntarily that many of these events are as important or bet on only to the X-Games in stature and importance to their career. This is huge for au pastticity with their target.Red Bull has grown up with its audience, and them with it. 5. Control Last aspire on creation vs sponsorship is about check everyplace. Namely, when y ou own the event, you do what you want with it. You control the promotion, the PR, the pass on, the branding, when it happens, where it happens, whos involved. Everything. Even as a long-term sponsor of an event, you are ultimately at the mercy of the events owners and along for the ride. longevity Many brands flit from campaign to campaign, with their event activation a tacked on component that is rarely addressed consistently. Getting ommitment to ongoing events from a brand can be near impossible. Red Bull is fundamentally different in this regard. They create experiences that generate value for the brand and because they general anatomy equity in them consistently over time, just as most brands would do with important product innovations and sub-brands. This is hugely cost effective compared to reinventing the cps every year, and it ensures the brand becomes fundamentally woven into the lives of the athletes and influential consumers they wish to reach, as Red Bull is guara nteed to be part of their year, every year.Plus the audience often scales in size annually. Flugtag and Red Bull Soap rap race are now yearly highlights for many consumers, reaching personal audiences of hundreds of thousand of concourse in many cities. In Brazil over one million people turned up for the Red Bull Air fly the coop. From the list below you can see sponsorship of some events much(prenominal) as Flugtag reaching back all the way to 1991, but the big majority of the events theyve created over the years are still ongoing, year afterwards year.Depth and breadth. Another key differentiator with Red Bull is the unimagined effort they have gone to in order to own implement capers and become embedded in youth culture across the board. They have quite literally gone after every action sport you can echo of, and in a number of cases essentially created their own sports. Theyve since started attacking music and art with the same vigour. Where most brands are halcyon t o tack on their logo to a handful of events in a year and call it a sponsorship strategy, Red Bull is literally ubiquitous.In many cases they are absolutely essential to the vitality of the sports they sponsor. Use creativity to reinforce the brand and create cut-through Looking down the list, another thing becomes immediately clear all of the events sound awesome. Last Man standing(a). Down and Dirty. Exodus. Chopper Assault. City rabidity. Heavy Metal. Red Bull have used crazy sounding and subversive names to build excitement around events out front youve even heard of them to and to indelibly stamp them as Red Bull.Additionally, Red Bull seek out and create a intellect of drama and the spectacular with each event to rival anything Evel Knieval couldve ever imagined. descending(prenominal) bike racing through Rios most notorious barrios? Wakeboarding in the dark in a flooded mine? Motocross duelling in bullrings? bowl derby on ice skates? Red Bull has made it their guardi anship to bring barely imaginable experiences into existence, and give them all the spectacle and pomp of a real sport. And then to do it again, year after year. Create shareable inwardness and earn your media How can Red Bull possibly afford all this?Well, they do the opposite thing most brands do. Most brands spend a tiny bit on content, and then 10x as much on media to try and spread that content as far as possible, because people arent really that interested in what they are saying so they have to get it in front of eyeballs by force. Which of course then diminishes the value of reaching those people, given they would rather you werent. Red Bull was doing pull in media before it was a buzzword. They invest in unique, compelling experiences, and in the creation of content from those experiences.They get a significant amount of very deep and powerful brand interaction at the actual experiences themselves, both from participants and spectators. And then through a combination of P R, word of mouth, and pull media channels they get an absolute ton of exposure of their content. And through platforms like their popular Facebook page, content-rich website, Red Bulletin, and a legion of popular microsites and brand communities like FMXWorld, Red Bull can legitimately claim to be a media brand in its own right at a time when most brands are still talking about the idea.The reason Red Bull is so exciting as a brand and a case pick up to so many is theyve flipped the traditional advertising model on its head. They invest most of their budget in experiences, content and media assets, and allocate comparably little to actual media itself. They trust if they build cool things, people impart seek it out and talk about it, and they are right. From a Brandweek denomination from 2001 In the antithesis of any majors marketing plan, Red Bull buys traditional advertising last. Only when a market is deemed mature does the company begin a media push.The idea is to reinforce, not introduce, the brand. Media is not a beast that we use to establish the market, said vp-marketing David Rohdy. It is a critical part. Its just later in the development. The brand spent $100 million in the U. S. last year, according to the company Measured media spending was only $18. 9 million last year, up from $9 million in 1999, per emulous Media Reporting. In a way their model is to first build targeted, ubiquitous relevance rather than broad mass awareness. They dont take out, they focus deep and then bubble up.And the latter approach gives them a much stronger and longer-lasting foundation for their activity, and costs them less. Paid media fits into the mix later to change integrity the position, but its an enhancer rather than the foundation. Mix global platforms and local anesthetic activation Red Bull is looking for the ultimate blend of local relevance and cost-effective impact. So they have a chaotic but effective mix of global platforms such as Flugtag and Air Race and tens of locally focused events. Many events start out locally and then get rolled out across regions as the template is perfected. financial backing and creating with your audiencesI think I got this insight out of one of the many great Mobile Youth presentations on Red Bull. Basically the point is everything Red Bull do is about creating and living with their audience, rather than messaging at them. What else? I think you can probably tell from this can and the preceding list that Im a massive fan of Red Bulls strategy. Its unique, its effective, and it has a pile to say about where the next generation of marketing is heading. Would love to hear what other lessons youve taken from Red Bulls approach, and what other brands you think are doing this right.