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Comment by simplyluke | Hacker News Reader

Red Bull sponsors an amazing variety of cultural events as well as athletes including in some exceedingly niche sports as well as very very expensive endeavors (running effectively two formula 1 teams, fleet of old expensive to maintain aircraft, etc).

Their marketing budget must be massive. My understanding is the unit cost of any kind of drink is very low and its entirely a market-dominance driven game so the spend makes a lot of sense especially when they command a premium price.

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Their Github (!) has a collection of event sourcing libraries they've built on top of Scala/Akka. Their budget is big enough for a soft drink company to justify a sizable open source program.

So much of product, especially beverage marketing is positioning yourself as being a part of a certain community, it's very possible their open source contributions are simply an extension of that.

There is a reason why Cocacola spends an obscene amount of money marketing sugared water. Almost every country I have been, I have seen coca cola bill board ads. They paint your storefront free if it's coca cola branded. Give you a free coca cola branded fridge if you only sell their drinks. They really do go out of their way to make a brand impression.

I'm impressed

They sponsor a lot of collegiate hackathons. College students and high-income developers working long hours are natural target customers.

Red Bull is a media company that sells an energy drink. Not an energy drink company.

Some of their downhill mountain biking races through narrow village streets are amazing. Honestly, all of their mountain biking videos are incredible.

One of my favorites: https://youtu.be/mFuSjk7jv_M

This is why I love mountain biking. Flying through the woods (or this setting) is just exhilarating.

You’re not thinking about the problems of life, you’re thinking and reacting to what’s a tenth of a second in front of you. What’s beyond that turn? You’ll find out soon enough.

Yeah, no room for extraneous worries when you are trying to navigate constantly shifting landscapes of obstacles and advantages.

Another one because why not.

https://youtu.be/K_7k3fnxPq0

Danny MacAskill is incredible and when you watch the behind the scenes videos you really get a sense of how patient and supportive Red Bull are of their athletes.

So good!

He's incredible. All of their athletes are. I don't know if mere mortals understand just how good the best in the world are at their sport. It's always inspiring to see creativity in unexpected places.

Incidentally - or not, as the case may be - Red Bull's Danish offices are right on top of Google's in central Copenhagen. So much so that once I mistook one backdoor for the other.

The Google logo on the frontdoor, by the way, says Göögle.

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