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RedBull Creation, hardware hacking contest

redbullusa.com

37 pointsnyellin14 comments

RedBull has turned out to be one seriously cool company. They're almost like what we all thought (hoped?) Google was going to turn into.

The contests RedBull organizes in extreme sports have really pushed the boundaries. They created a new sport with the Crashed Ice series. RedBull runs downhill mountain bike races through the streets of Spain. They have a Music Academy. RedBull is the coolest company in the world.

Or they found people already doing this and gave them a jumper and hat.

Red Bull spends a lot of money on seeming cool. Some of their stuff is neat, but in the end its just marketing. Their core business is still selling overpriced energy drinks.

Google spends a lot of money on seeming cool. Some of their stuff is neat, but in the end its just marketing. Their core business is still selling overpriced advertisements.

Google has some cool core technology. In a way most of it is a vehicle to sell/target ads, sure, but the relationship between their cool stuff and revenue source is a lot closer than with Red Bull.

Don't under-credit marketing. It could be argued that things such as Gmail and Android are "just marketing".

If they make cool things so that they can sell overpriced energy drinks, aren't they still making cool things? Isn't that still a good thing?

I love RedBull's approach to sponsorships and marketing. Like many others, I really think they just get it.

RedBull sponsors such a wide variety of activities, it's amazing. They hold tonnes of mainstream pop culture events, and then have events like these and other obscure sports/hobbies. Not only that, they do a very good job at executing these events as well. That said, is the market for RedBull that big? Sometimes I have trouble grasping how they do so much aside from their core business while being profitable. These events probably cost less to promote in total than I think, and I'm assuming RedBull does have a high markup, but am I missing something?

A big part of advertising is convincing thought-leaders (marketing speak for 'the cool kids' in a given social sphere) to use your product.

If spending $60,000 on a series of events gets two or three 'cool' people to promote the product, who in turn influence even just 1000 followers to become regular drinkers, then it's paid for itself.

I think in the US a (single) can of red bull at a gas station is around three bucks, so at a 30% cut a roughly can-a-day habit earns them at least $1000 a year. (Making some big simplifications about transport/retailers cuts).

Combine that with big mass of people who might buy a can or two a week (and thus might be easier to influence) and you can see why sponsoring cheap, high-influencer events like extreme sports and niche music/hobbies that trickle down is a pretty clever marketing strategy.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is a great example of this same strategy, they were a cheap redneck beer until they started sponsoring a string of low volume indie rock/fashion events in the big cities, and made sure that drinking it would be 'ironic', and now they're hugely popular with young people.

I'm quite impressed at the amount of thought given to the invitation. Is there a site that is cataloging the easter eggs as they are found? Can anyone identify some of the circuit components from the video?

http://charliex2.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/redbull-marketing-... has some info

Red Bull is a really cool company, even though I don't like energy drinks. Did you know they have a record label? It seems like one of those things where someone said "Yeah and we should have a record label..." and then poof! It exists.

http://www.redbullrecords.com/

I am not clear how the online qualifier differs, but they ran a portion of this for hackerspaces. I'm involved with i3Detroit and while I didn't contibute to this RedBull challenge, I had a lot of fun watching other members crack the challenge.

Details; http://www.i3detroit.com/taking-the-red-bull-by-the-horns-ac...

I'm sure whatever the online challenge is would be significantly different. I doubt RedBull would be sending puzzle boxes to all participants.

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