The Red Bull playbook tech companies should steal

Usually, we share advanced analysis to run, cases of amazing tech companies, or something else.

Today, we're talking about an energy drink. Stay with us because this potent drink can teach tech a lot about advertising.

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:26) - Energy Boosts and Red Bull
• (14:29) - Red Bull's Media Empire
• (17:34) - Examples of Media and Community Acquisitions
• (19:15) - Red Bull's Endless Content Stream
• (24:20) - Red Bull's Stratosphere Jump
• (26:21) - Outrageous Marketing Stunts
• (29:00) - Local and Grassroots Marketing Efforts
• (31:57) - Takeaways for Software Companies
• (32:21) - Creative Marketing Examples in Software

Never miss a new episode, join our newsletter on revenueformula.substack.com

Creators and Guests

Host

Mikkel Plaehn

Marketing leader & b2b saas nerd

Host

Toni Hohlbein

2x exited CRO | 1x Founder | Podcast Host

What is The Revenue Formula?

This podcast is about scaling tech startups.

Hosted by Toni Hohlbein & Raul Porojan, together they look at the full funnel.

With a combined 20 years of experience in B2B SaaS and 3 exits, they discuss growing pains, challenges and opportunities they’ve faced. Whether you're working in RevOps, sales, operations, finance or marketing - if you care about revenue, you'll care about this podcast.

If there’s one thing they hate, it’s talk. We know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron. But execution and focus is the key - that’s why each episode is designed to give 1-2 very concrete takeaways.

[00:00:00] Mikkel: sell 8 billion cans per year,
[00:00:02] Toni: Let, let, let, let, let that sing in here for a second.
[00:00:05] Mikkel: that's a lot of aluminum
[00:00:06] Toni: billion cans. It's not 8 billion in revenue. No, no, no, no. It's 8 billion cans
[00:00:12] Mikkel: they've done some things very differently to succeed that tech can learn from. And when you think about, well, I'm in B2B, well, really B2B is just a slower version of B2C. Let's be honest. That's what it is. It's a slower version of B2C. So you can still apply some of these learnings
[00:00:28] Toni: And then the crazy thing is, then they win this thing like four times in a row now. Right. Isn't that, isn't that insane? It's like, well, you know, if you want to, if you want to be successful in your life, I guess you got to drink Red Bull. I'm
[00:00:43] Mikkel: Yeah, exactly. No, it's true.​
[00:00:47] You know what, that the intro music kind of reminds me of, have you seen gone in
[00:00:51] 60 seconds? Yeah. The heydays. Have you seen gone in 60 seconds? Like old Nick, old school Nicholas Cage movie?
[00:00:57] Toni: Maybe, maybe, maybe. I don't
[00:00:59] know.
[00:00:59] Mikkel: Where it's basically where they Nick, they Nick cars. They steal cars. It's
[00:01:04] with Angelina Jolie. Nicholas Cage is like for all the millennials
[00:01:07] out there.
[00:01:08] Let's watch that again and have some fun, but like they have this ritual where they have to listen to low rider and just stand there and take it in.
[00:01:15] And it's the same for us. Like we have the intro music and just really gets you, it gets you going, right. It gets you into the mood. But ever since we switched to remote async recording, whatever we want to call it, we can't really play it.
[00:01:29] We, so you and I, we can't hear it unless we do it. Like honestly, it's
[00:01:31] Toni: It's, It's, it's, because of, it's because of Riverside. Let's just be clear about this. That's actually the reason why can they not create a third audio line for this one. So we can listen to it when we want to listen to it, but take it out when we
[00:01:46] Mikkel: So actually what we would really appreciate as host is that you send a complaint
[00:01:51] to Riverside saying it's really frustrating that our hosts of the revenue formula cannot hear the intro music while recording.
[00:01:59] It's very disruptive. It's very disruptive.
[00:02:00] Indeed. It's
[00:02:01] Toni: It's a biggie.
[00:02:02] Mikkel: It's a biggie.
[00:02:03] It's a biggie. And also like, so the thing is like, how do you then get going? How do you get summoned the strength and energy to like really deliver those punchy remarks, the great segways, all that stuff. Like what, what are the any kind of cheat codes, anything we can consume here that would help us.
[00:02:19] Toni: No.
[00:02:20] Mikkel: You're such an idiot. That was like the perfect setup. That was the perfect setup and you screwed it intentionally.
[00:02:26] You could, drink a Red
[00:02:27] Toni: we could, we could drink something, you
[00:02:29] Mikkel: you could drink a Red Bull. Come on, right? You could have an energy drink. So what the heck are two tech leaders, go to market leaders in software startup doing, recording an episode about Red Bull, by the way?
[00:02:43] What's going on there?
[00:02:44] Toni: Why, why is it that we actually want to talk about, about Red Bull, right? Kind of, how did we even, so, and I think also the, the setup of the show today is going to be a little bit different actually.
[00:02:54] You know, usually we talk about the bow tie and, and all of these things in there and some growth hacks and pricing and some AI. But today we actually want to you know, look at a company, like in this case, Red Bull, which I'm sure everyone here is familiar with and dissect a little bit how they got to where they are, because many of us, if you, if you're like, you know, our age, you kind of grew up as like, oh, this was already a big company.
[00:03:14] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:03:15] Toni: and, and, and, and I think people forget really quickly that, no, wait a minute. This was actually a small company also at some point in time. How did they make it? How did they get where they are right now? And why are they doing all this stuff that they're doing? Right. And we wanted to kind of start this journey with Red Bull because it's it's just so visual, it's so vivid what they're doing.
[00:03:34] Right. So you can really, you can really kind of hang
[00:03:36] Mikkel: it's also like when you think about it, they've done some things very differently to succeed that tech can learn from. And when you think about, well, I'm in B2B, well, really B2B is just a slower version of B2C. Let's be honest. That's what it is. It's a slower version of B2C. So you can still apply some of these learnings and we'll definitely try and take some of those insights and turn them into, Hey, here's some examples from software, from tech. First we just wanted to give a bit of context because probably not everyone knows. How Red Bull came to be the company that they are today. So just some background stuff here started by a duck farmer, started by a duck farmer out of Thailand. Producing basically a drink to keep you awake. This was a big
[00:04:16] Toni: I totally thought this was a joke coming.
[00:04:18] I
[00:04:18] Mikkel: No, I was like no this
[00:04:20] Toni: notes. Like, where does it, where does it say the duck
[00:04:22] Mikkel: is this is not this is a duck farmer. This is the first bullet he basically a duck farmer started one of the world's most famous brands. He made an austrian They hit it off, build red bull basically from there.
[00:04:32] It's available in more than 170 countries. They do sell 8 billion cans per
[00:04:37] year,
[00:04:37] Toni: Let, let, let, let, let that thing sing in here for a second.
[00:04:40] Mikkel: that's a lot of aluminum
[00:04:42] Toni: billion cans. It's not 8 billion in revenue. No, no, no, no. It's 8 billion cans. And then you still kind of multiply this by, I don't know what does it cost? I don't even know. Depending on the country, obviously. And then you get to the revenue number.
[00:04:55] Mikkel: So the thing is they can they, they charge a premium. We'll get into that later, but they are a premium price brand. How did they get so successful? Well, you know what they did, which is also kind of what VCs want in software. They created a new market.
[00:05:10] We, I think you and I. You just said it, when you look back, you kind of take for granted, like, yeah, Red Bull has always been around.
[00:05:16] It's like, no, they haven't. They've not been around forever. They're, they're like the first company that built a energy, you know, built the energy drink market, basically, is what
[00:05:26] they did. That's, that's what they created.
[00:05:28] Toni: And also the niche that they carved out um, and is, is really the you know, People that don't want to drink cold coffee you know, that are maybe outside and kind of, I don't know, need energy for some, for some fricking reason. That's, that's the market niche that they found, right? And in the beginning it was maybe just a small niche and.
[00:05:49] And now just snowballed into, well, they are the core folks that need this, quote unquote, need this, but then there are so many other people that just want to associate with that. It's like, Oh, look at me. I have like a Red Bull. I'm also a skydiver, you know,
[00:06:02] Mikkel: or parent,
[00:06:05] Toni: all paired, you know, same. same. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
[00:06:08] Mikkel: but I think it's also like from the infancy when I, when I ran through the research, it's very clear they were a different company. Almost from the beginning, because when you look at it, they don't own any production facilities. They don't own that.
[00:06:20] And I think you brought it up and I had to really fact check. And it's like, no, you know what? I couldn't find any like black and white. Here it goes. They own it. No, they have a bottler somewhere and stuff. So, so they don't have the production facilities and it makes sense when you're starting out. That's actually a huge cost. In the early days to invest in that kind of stuff. Also they didn't go through very traditional distribution channels like they, they didn't. I heard the story about what's it called? The famous super trendy water brand out of the States.
[00:06:48] Toni: Like death, something.
[00:06:51] Mikkel: Oh my god, we're so boom.
[00:06:53] This is such a boomer
[00:06:54] thing right
[00:06:54] now.
[00:06:54] Toni: you mean the, the, deaf
[00:06:55] Mikkel: Yeah.
[00:06:56] Yeah Yeah the death what what I call Anyway, they tried to break into UK and they failed because they couldn't get into basically all the retail stores where you buy groceries It was too difficult to succeed there. And you know what they had a bad.
[00:07:11] It's like you do a pilot Of a new show and when the pilot fails like cut it show's not gonna happen It's the same that happens there with those chains. It's like brutal. So what did red bull do? Well, they just went to nightclubs Universities other places to then say do you want to sell this energy drink there?
[00:07:29] That was like the, their wedge in basically. And I think Oatly is another, by the way,
[00:07:33] great example. They also had another entry point into the market, right? So they definitely did things differently. And by the way, as they started succeeding, when they entered a new market, they create Scott, they created scarcity, by the way, they created scarcity.
[00:07:48] So Abercrombie Fitch, they, they did something almost. almost. similar, they would hire folks to stand in line when a new store opened outside. So people are like, Whoa, what is going on here?
[00:07:59] Toni: This is one of the most ridiculous stories I have about Stockholm. So I'm, you know, we're, we're in Copenhagen and I've been to Stockholm a couple of times and back then, like it was a long time ago. My wife and I went to, went to a club and to get into a
[00:08:13] Mikkel: okay. So It is a long
[00:08:15] Toni: It was a very long time ago.
[00:08:16] We didn't call each other wife and husband back then, I can tell you that. And and there was like a super long, there was a super long line. outside the club to kind of get in
[00:08:26] and you wait and you wait and it's half an hour. And it's, I mean, it's fucking cold in Stockholm, you know, and then you get in and it's empty.
[00:08:32] Mikkel: yeah,
[00:08:33] Toni: It's basically, you know, creating some kind of formal on the outside in order to get in.
[00:08:38] And and kind of these guys did the same thing. Now I would wonder, like, did they do this on purpose or did they, maybe they didn't have that much that they could actually, you know, push to that market. Right. Maybe, maybe it was not.
[00:08:49] Ooh, you know, you know, five other people also looking at this hotel room kind of scarcity. Maybe it was like, dude, we just didn't have more, you
[00:08:56] Mikkel: yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's a little bit of the context here. Don't want to, you know, go deeper now because otherwise we might
[00:09:05] slip a little bit in terms of the episode. So let's kick things off by me asking you a question. What are they selling? What is Red Bull selling?
[00:09:12] Toni: I mean, obviously they're selling you know, sugar water with some caffeine in it. Right. Kind of, that's, that's the first thing that goes through your mind. Right. And then, you know, you do the abstraction and the abstraction, and we kind of talked about this. I kind of know what the answer
[00:09:25] is. But the you know, eventually you kind of arrive at this point where you think like,
[00:09:30] you know, they're, they're probably selling like a lifestyle.
[00:09:33] They're probably selling a, you know, wish of the world of a person that either they're living and therefore they're saying like, Oh, you know, I I'm living this lifestyle, so therefore I'm drinking this. And, but at the much bigger market is people that don't live this lifestyle, but want to, you know, seem like they do and then drink it.
[00:09:53] Right. And I think it's kind of the, the party people and then there's the adrenaline junkies. I think it's kind of those two, basically that you want to associate with if, if, if you go for it.
[00:10:03] Mikkel: Yeah. So it's like also common. You'll see Red Bull heavily. If you go skiing on the slopes and you go at presky you'll see a Yager bombs, which is Red Bull and Yeager mixed together.
[00:10:12] Right? So you'll, you'll see it a ton there. And I also think like, it's not like people want to have. That lifestyle. Indefinite. Like identify it just as that there can be a moment in time where it's like, okay, now I'm on a holiday skiing. Now I just want a taste of that life. Right. So they almost like, it's almost like you called it a movement. And the other example we talked about even before hitting record was Patagonia as well, which
[00:10:36] is much more around the carbon footprint reuse all the issues around basically the textile. And I think it's, it's so spot on, like. What Red Bull has done is they started creating a movement of that whole adrenaline junkie world. And personally, I'm not the adrenaline junkie, but do I enjoy watching some of the stunts they make? And like, yeah, I think that is pretty awesome to be honest. I think that's pretty awesome. And I think a lot of folks, you know, , feel the same. Maybe they're clinging to something from, you know, the past when they were younger or just want to, quite frankly, be part of it, I think. Does that ring a little bit of a bell if you stop thinking startups, by the way,
[00:11:17] who, who created, who created a movement?
[00:11:19] What happened there? Should we like, do you, do you have something that what comes to mind for you,
[00:11:23] Toni: So, I mean, obviously everyone, like, what is it 10, 12 minutes into the show? I was like, wait a minute, didn't these guys talk about tech usually what's, what's going, what's going on here. So how does that connect back to our actual world that we're living in in terms of, you know, SaaS technology and so forth?
[00:11:40] Well, I think there are a couple of people that in B2B build a movement and, and monetized heavily around this. Right. So kind of. And did this on purpose, which I would say kind of Red Bull did the same thing. They did this thing on purpose, basically. Right. And the, the first one that comes to mind is obviously something around Salesforce, like, you know, Mark Benioff and, you know, you know, busy talking about no software, that, that, that was a big thing and super confusing nowadays, but why, why was he talking about no software?
[00:12:11] It's like, there's like. There, there are things around it that totally made sense back then. And he was able to create a movement around this. And then you had maybe, you know, if we stay in this HubSpot, you know, inbound marketing kind of, there was a movement around this, right? You, you tried, you know, the drift guys, no forms.
[00:12:27] It's kind of a movement around this. And then I would say very recently, and on top of everyone's minds, it's kind of clay, clay is building a movement around go to market engineering. It's like, Oh, you know, it's I am kind of a tech bro kind of guy, but I don't write any code and I want to help my company make money.
[00:12:46] What can I do? Previously I was kind of useless. Now I have clay, you know, I can do all of these wonderful things and, and, and you can see how this. Movement is playing out on LinkedIn right now with the clagencies with the meetups and, and so forth. Right. And to a degree, I think those are equivalents in B2B that we sometimes see as a little bit foreign and weird almost.
[00:13:10] It's like, you know, why, why would they do that stuff? Well, there are some companies in the non B2B space that have been extremely successful. With it and taking some inspiration from them, you know, on purpose or not, but taking some inspiration for them and trying to kind of mold your own business around it.
[00:13:28] I think that's a, that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea.
[00:13:32] Mikkel: I also know Salesforce, by the way, they've also done a ton of things. Obviously we covered their story endlessly, but they did a ton of things as well with the no software. They did rioters
[00:13:40] outside the SIPO conference, right. Took out very different ads. They even have today documentaries they've created, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:13:48] So they, there are companies who still have some of those flavors, right. So I definitely think there's something around the whole building a movement and not just being a seller of a product or a service, but almost setting off a desire that someone has. So, I mean, we when we were building grow blocks, one of the things we played with was the whole rebels are in system admins as the, the movement we wanted to create.
[00:14:12] Right. And definitely resonated with a bunch of folks. I gotta say, like a lot of people felt like seen with that message. And I think that is It's, it's difficult to create, but it's also doesn't mean you're guaranteed success, by the way. So, so let's continue into one of the other things basically Red Bull have done.
[00:14:29] You and I have talked a bit at least off air about a gentleman called Dave Gerhardt. You mentioned drift. He used to work there as their CMO currently running exit five, which is like a. B2B marketing community. He talks a lot about building a media empire, which is kind of funny because now he's done it, right.
[00:14:47] But actually very few companies in software has done it to the extent that Red Bull has, so I'm just going to like outline some of the things they, they have, they have a TV channel, they have a TV channel,
[00:15:01] Toni: By the way, we're talking back about Red Bull.
[00:15:04] Mikkel: Yeah, it's a Red Bull, Red Bull. They have, yeah, they, they have, it's not just like they spawned.
[00:15:08] No, no. They own a TV channel just to, to be very clear. Right. They have a magazine. Like a actual magazine, just like, what was it? The John Deere used to have back in the day for farmers. They have a magazine about adrenaline junkies and that kind of lifestyle, which is kind of amazing when you think about it, they do documentaries, they do a ton of events and I would say athletic competitions with an adrenaline flavor. They do a ton of that stuff as well. I don't know. Do you know, do they own the formula one team by the way? Are they
[00:15:37] just a sponsor? They own
[00:15:38] it.
[00:15:38] Yeah.
[00:15:39] Toni: Actually, actually, fun fact, they own two Formula One teams.
[00:15:42] Mikkel: two. Yeah. It wasn't enough to have one.
[00:15:44] They wanted to have first and second place.
[00:15:46] It's like the Porsche ad from back in the day.
[00:15:49] It's like, nobody's perfect. And then it's the Le Mans races. They won and out of 10, they lost one.
[00:15:55] So I like love it. But anyway, so, they also own, I think Red Bull Salzburg, by the way. I think they, they own the team.
[00:16:01] Toni: And they have the same it's not called Red Bull Leipzig, because that's not allowed. So they now call it Rasenball, which is kind of like a, you know, it's just RB. So everyone knows it's for Red Bull, but they own a basically a Bundesliga team in, in Germany.
[00:16:17] Mikkel: Yeah, that's great. And they were about, they were trying to buy my team by the way. And it was like all kind of all hell broke loose. So anyway, so just think about it for a second. You, you are building a soft drink company and someone in the meeting says, guys, should we, should we like buy or maybe build a formula one team? This is like such a crazy decision to make. This is such a crazy decision to make.
[00:16:46] And I don't think I've seen great examples yet in our industry of folks taking it to this extent. I know by the way, so Adobe, they own a couple of media outlets like cmo. com, cfo. com and similar, they own those and they, they went and bought them to kind of make them part of their.
[00:17:04] Toni: Yeah,
[00:17:05] Mikkel: know, environment. So it's not fully true. Some have also done obviously there's Dreamforce. Some do conferences, right. As part of it. But I think to the extent that Red Bull has gone, it's, I don't know about you, have you noticed any that, that go to that length actually?
[00:17:20] Toni: Well, it's, I think it's difficult to go to that length, right? Because I think running a Formula One team, I think it's like a hundred, a hundred million in budget or something like that's just like, you know,
[00:17:30] So, but you know, some similar things have been there, right?
[00:17:34] So you, you think about HubSpot buying inbound.
[00:17:37] org or something like this kind of, they, they bought this community there, right? You think about. I want to say some of the analysts in the space. So like a Gartner forest and so forth buying the demand waterfall company. It was serious, serious decisions and stuff like that. Right. There are people that are doing that stuff from a media perspective.
[00:17:58] There are companies that are also thinking, you know, that. I think it's a very, very small example. But we saw folks like HockeyStack kind of building some kind of a area of like media content that was basically supplied by influencers and so forth. Right.
[00:18:14] So people are, you know, and, and I would even say the whole founder led marketing, you know, founder brand.
[00:18:21] All of that stuff is, you know, very small versions of the same flavor to, to a degree.
[00:18:27] Mikkel: I think you're right. Also with the specifically the folks that jumped on the audience plus thing,
[00:18:31] which is what you're mentioning here with HockeyStack, Lemlis did the same, I forget what it was called. There were a few others who actually did a pretty great job. I got to say with it. You also have Hotspot.
[00:18:39] They bought the, my first million show.
[00:18:42] Right. And a couple of others, actual media outfits. I know Dave Gerhart was like, probably I'm going to end up selling my thing to a company at some point who just want to get that media.
[00:18:51] I think the beautiful thing you just have to realize here is you now own an asset where you're guaranteed reach.
[00:18:59] That's what you have. Like if, if you want to place an ad in whatever Forbes go ahead, but it's pay to play right. Red Bull now, just by affiliation, it will be like, Oh, I got the Red Bull magazine. It's like, okay, do they need to even put in an ad now? It's like,
[00:19:15] Toni: but what I, what I think is even, even more awesome, especially with like a formula one team. It's like, you don't need to sit there and be like, what am I going to write about today? You know, you don't have, you don't have like any kind of
[00:19:29] Mikkel: no,
[00:19:29] Toni: pipeline issues. It's like, Oh my effing God,
[00:19:33] like they're going on this next thing and this is happening.
[00:19:36] And Max Verstappen does this and here's this other thing. And it's like. There is an endless stream of content coming out that is just a perfect fit for Red Bull, right? Kind of, how can, you know, I don't know how fast these, these guys drive, like fast, really fast. Like this is the definition of adrenaline, right?
[00:19:56] Kind of, it's, it's the definition and kind of whatever they're doing, it's like, it's. Every single piece of content fits exactly into what Red Bull wants to do. And then the crazy thing is, then they win this thing like four times in a row now. Right. Isn't that, isn't that insane? It's like, well, you know, if you want to, if you want to be successful in your life, I guess you got to drink Red Bull.
[00:20:19] I'm
[00:20:20] Mikkel: Yeah, exactly. No, it's true. It's like that affiliation with success. It's just like the Nike playbook. It's so,
[00:20:25] it's such a beautiful execution. And the other thing it makes me think of, by the way, is also something we've talked about in software, by the way, it's Disney from the example of. They, they produce a, they think franchise.
[00:20:36] So they produce a movie. How can we use it for a rollercoaster in our theme
[00:20:41] parks? What about all our clothing lines? What about, I don't know, toys, a million other games, you name it, right? So they, they have that kind of mindset. And when you look at what Red Bull has done here, it's kind of the same to degree.
[00:20:54] It's like, I don't think they started with the TV channel. They probably came to your point to a place in time where they had so much content that like, Hey. We'd be stupid not to do a TV
[00:21:05] channel, like filling this up is not that difficult. It's, it's more distribution. It all blends so well together with what we're doing.
[00:21:11] So they really succeeded building a media empire. And I just got to say like the power here is owning that asset. That's a huge competitive advantage. It is massive for someone to come in and basically disrupt Red Bull. They have to disrupt that entire value chain. And that is immensely difficult. I just, I just got to say it's immensely difficult when they own it.
[00:21:34] And what are you seeing now in software? You're seeing folks work with creators.
[00:21:37] To get some of those steps done. They see whether it's like creating eBooks or LinkedIn posts or podcasts or similar. Right. Do you see some of those things slowly start to happen? And I think we will probably see in the next couple of years, a company merge who really execute this perfectly. We will probably
[00:21:54] see
[00:21:54] Toni: No, it's almost like who's gonna buy Mr. Beast,
[00:21:57] Mikkel: Yeah,
[00:21:58] Toni: if anyone can by the way,
[00:21:59] I'm not
[00:21:59] Mikkel: No, no, he's probably going to buy someone
[00:22:01] instead.
[00:22:01] Toni: Yeah, I know, but you know what I mean? It's like, that would be the ultimate media outlet you want to acquire. It just would need to make a ton of sense for you to do it. Right. But it's like, those are, those are the kind of, you know, you know, ideas you almost as a business need to execute where you like really think hard about, you know, why, why would that make sense for us?
[00:22:19] And I got to say kind of that part of like, why don't you just buy. I mean, now that I'm saying it, you have Visma here out of the Nordics. They own the cycling team, right? Kind
[00:22:32] Mikkel: that's true. Yeah. They
[00:22:33] want,
[00:22:33] Toni: right? Kind of, they own the, they own the cycling team and you know, it has to do with precision and all of that stuff.
[00:22:39] And kind of, they said, I mean, Visma is usually mostly accounting software basically, right? They do all kinds of stuff, but the core is accounting, I think. Like, yeah, that makes sense kind of for the bikes and so forth. But, but anyway, kind of, I think there's sometimes a little bit of a blend between sponsorships and owning something.
[00:22:55] But but there are some examples where, where I feel it's it's a little bit far away from software to go out and buy a, you know, from that one
[00:23:05] team
[00:23:05] Mikkel: Yeah. I think it's not, it's not as, it's not as clear cut
[00:23:07] because the lifestyle, what are you going to sell an adrenaline junkie lifestyle for folks who do accounting? It's like, come on.
[00:23:12] It's like, it's not, it's just, it's not gonna, it's not gonna mesh that well, but I think you will find some of those elements where it's like, just think about the traveling sector. You could play with the traveling sector, right? So I think let's leave the realm now
[00:23:24] of the media empire. There's a beautiful inspiration here at least, I think for folks to take away and think a little bit about how can you build a model inspired by what Red Bull is doing. The other thing I think that set them up to do incredibly well, and I, and I get this heavily a marketing case, right? But because. They're very intentionally not a soft drink producer, but selling a lifestyle. It also means that they run their advertising fundamentally differently than anyone else out there. I just have to say like the, the stuff they do is, is crazy and I don't know where to start. Honestly, I don't know which example to pull off first, but maybe just to kind of ease into it. I looked at some of their their titles on their YouTube videos. And just to give you like two, just how good, how well executed some of this stuff is, it's like flying into an active volcano.
[00:24:16] Toni: Click.
[00:24:17] Mikkel: Wow. Yeah. I gotta watch that
[00:24:19] guys.
[00:24:20] I jumped from space
[00:24:22] Toni: Yeah.
[00:24:22] Mikkel: it's just like, where does this stuff come from? So the, I jumped from space.
[00:24:26] Let's talk about this for a
[00:24:27] second. This if you don't know what is the stratosphere jump they did, this was basically, I think, was it a balloon or
[00:24:34] something. They all the way up to the top of the stratosphere, I guess.
[00:24:39] And then this guy, I don't know what his name was, could, would basically jump with a parachute and like a space suit on
[00:24:45] actually. And this thing would be live streamed on YouTube. They had 8 million concurrent viewers watching this thing at the same time
[00:24:53] as
[00:24:53] Toni: I still remember. I still remember watching this thing, by the way, and I was, for some reason, I was in Berlin, I was on my phone, I was watching it over the phone, and it was so crazy, I was in, in, in, in the train, I was in the S Bahn or something like this,
[00:25:07] it was so crazy, I had to step out, you know, it wasn't my stop, I stepped out, sat down, and watched it there and then, and then the, I still remember this, and then the the stream cut out, because he started spinning, and And the stream cut out and the commentator was like, Oh, you know, shouldn't be spitting that much.
[00:25:25] It's not, it's not really a good thing for
[00:25:27] Mikkel: I can see You like standing up at the train station, but just screaming.
[00:25:31] Toni: and like, everyone was like, is that he's like this, this is this turned from a great thing to a terrible thing for Red Bull and you know, he obviously survived everything was good, but I mean it like this was an advertisement stunt.
[00:25:46] And I'm not, I'm not easily, I mean, you know, I'm not easily swayed by this shit.
[00:25:50] I don't care about this so much, but I stepped out of the S Bahn, you know, kind of sat down, watched it and, you know, almost lost my mind when they cut out the the live stream, because this guy probably died live on
[00:26:01] YouTube at that point, right? And so, so the, the ability to capture attention like this was something that's completely outrageous.
[00:26:10] Well, well, frickin done well
[00:26:12] Mikkel: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I agree. And I think like, again, who goes like, okay guys. So for this year's marketing budget, here's what we're going to
[00:26:21] do. We're going to have someone jump from space and then someone, sorry, excuse me. What do you mean? Jump from space? Yeah, it's going to jump from space, but how we'll just get a balloon. This is easy,
[00:26:32] right? So, yeah,
[00:26:32] Toni: the, the, equivalent in, in, in software right now for something crazy is Oh, let's do a Superbowl ad, you know, like that's, that's the crazy level people that, you know, people go to right now. Right. But
[00:26:43] Mikkel: But I also think you, you gotta have respect. So most advertising today is going to be, Oh, let's do another version of a Facebook ad that we can just
[00:26:52] Toni: yeah, let's do a webinar,
[00:26:54] Mikkel: You
[00:26:54] know?
[00:26:54] no, exactly. And the point here is like. While they do some of that and they do the regular ads really well,
[00:27:01] by the way, it's not the core where they seem to spend most of their energy is to orchestrate some of these things.
[00:27:08] Honestly, that's, that's what they do. And you just mentioned the the final NFL final, right. And that made me think of gong, even
[00:27:17] their ads. They're not just regular ads. Like they, they made something that felt like TV ads are also funny and interesting and still got their message across. And I don't think many folks take it even to that level, to be honest,
[00:27:28] not, not many do. And I think it's also part of it is also, well, we got to be able to measure it. What if this crazy thing we want to do doesn't work? Let's let's play it a bit more safe. Right. I think it's. It's a little bit more difficult for folks to, with conviction, go in and make some of those bets.
[00:27:46] And, and I think the rare cases where it happens, it's because there's someone on the founding team or someone with a seat at the table who has a lot of power, who has a clear vision and really can pull this
[00:27:59] off.
[00:28:00] Toni: But I also think, and we kind of, you guys should listen back to the Udi Lillager kind of episode he's the CMO of Gong and he basically pulled these things off. He also told us 80 percent of your marketing budget goes to the normal stuff. 15 percent of your budget goes to experimental stuff. And 5 percent of your budget goes to the crazy stuff.
[00:28:16] And you need to grow to a certain marketing budget size.
[00:28:20] To have, you know, 5 percent being something that can pay for a, uh, like in this case, in a Superbowl ad, right. And and I'm not, I'm not sure. I'm, I don't know, but I want to say that some of those crazy stunts the 5 percent of the Red Bull budget and, you know, pulling something like this off probably took a, you know, probably 10 million or something like this.
[00:28:43] And you need to have a certain size of a budget. In order to be saying like, okay, let's play around with those 5 percent and those 5 percent turn out to be 10 million, you know, kind of, you need to be a certain size in order to get there. But what I also see is that they're doing kind of some smaller stuff as well.
[00:29:00] Right.
[00:29:00] So I have like local events here in Copenhagen. I'm just remembering them jumping from a very known area here, kind of jumping from the roof of the opera into the water, kind of doing this kind of jump thing.
[00:29:11] Mikkel: It's like a competition,
[00:29:12] Toni: That they were like wakeboard competitions here in, in the canals kind of, and, and they're doing this everywhere basically.
[00:29:18] Right. And it's that kind of grassroots starting of all, I don't grassroots is the wrong word, but the local stuff is pretty interesting. Right. That they're executing really well.
[00:29:26] And
[00:29:26] Mikkel: what everyone
[00:29:27] Toni: go ahead.
[00:29:27] Mikkel: so what everyone knows is the the mini Coopers with the Red Bull
[00:29:31] on the back. Right. That's also like a very local thing. And, and I don't think it's that expensive actually to have a student drive that car around and then drop a few crates of Red Bull at a university or
[00:29:43] somewhere else. It's like, so I think you're right. They, what they do well there is. They have a very specific, very targeted local efforts. What, what you've seen in software is then someone basically renting out a coffee shop on wheels, parking it outside an office building, giving away, you know, stuff like that to kind of be a bit present in, in a different way. I think it's different for us in software. We don't have a fiscal good, you can give away in the same
[00:30:06] way. But the local effort I think is, is something they've done incredibly
[00:30:10] well.
[00:30:10] Toni: There's something different that they also know recently doing. So they've been working, obviously sponsoring real life events, like forever. Right. Kind of, when you think about.
[00:30:19] Downhill dirt biking or skydiving or like all of these equivalents of crazy people doing crazy stuff. Like they, they sponsor that stuff.
[00:30:27] And what I've now seen more and more is that they're actually starting to go very much also into e sports, right? Into basically electronic games. Like stuff people play on Twitch, basically, right? And, you know, the starting point, what everyone is doing is like, Oh, you know, let's just sponsor the, the, the creator.
[00:30:46] Like the influencer, you have the the mini fridge with Red Bulls in the shot all the time, right? Then you have like, well, you know, here's a banner or something like this. And in one game They now went so far to basically create a whole competition sponsored the whole event. You know had maps built Specifically for red bull with all the red bull themes in there and this was you know, and and basically they they unloaded the biggest prize pool ever in this game It's kind of a niche game for some reason i'm watching it right now.
[00:31:19] I don't know why I don't know why I'm also embarrassed,
[00:31:22] but, but exactly, but, you know, they, they didn't only Like, Oh, here's a little bit this and there's a bit of this. Can you put my banner here? It's like,
[00:31:30] you know what? We're going to take over this whole scene by this one big event. And we're going to capture everyone's everyone's attention.
[00:31:37] And and you know, I don't want to say they go all in but they basically kind of get to the tipping point. I want to say, right. By, by spending just a little bit more money and effort and then going from, Oh, this is a sponsor to, Oh my fucking God. These guys are pulling off something crazy here right now.
[00:31:55] And I bet I drink some Red Bull.
[00:31:56] Mikkel: So I think if I'm to dumb it down, what can you take away from this? It's like, well, they dare to do something that's kind of outrageous and very different, right? We, you and I talked about a while back ago about Mr. Beast, right? He would do a video where it's like, Trying to stay awake for four days,
[00:32:12] but that already there is interesting versus no sleep for like, he's, he really masters that stuff.
[00:32:17] And it's the same thing actually with Red Bull. Like I jumped from space example, right.
[00:32:21] Two examples I have from software that actually pulled this off really well, really, I think had the approach of what would a consumer brand do advertising wise a recent one is notion. They did a LinkedIn takeover.
[00:32:35] This was, don't get me wrong. This was coordinated. They hired a bunch of influencers. Not just, I think in soft in the software tech scale up scene, by the way, because their users transcend that to basically have a AI avatar profile picture created and they changed their, everyone changed their profile picture. With that, and you could go into Notion and have your own created pretty smart if you're not a user of Notion, by the way to then go and play with it. Right. So it was, I think, really well executed also as a way to position them being more focused on AI as a company, right. To be very honest, the other one which is just. Straight up crazy is Ryan Reynolds, he created an ad. I don't know if he owns a stake in the company or not, but he basically has an ad agency, Ryan Reynolds, funny enough. And they created an ad for a software company. I think it's called. I want to say mountain or something. They do something with it doesn't matter.
[00:33:26] It's for advertising purposes on TV. But it's a software company. They hired Steve O. To basically eat a Carolina Reaper and then pitch in less than 60 seconds, the software, and you can just, I'm just going to drop a picture into the video for you to see, and then you can go to YouTube and watch it because it is hilarious. It is absolutely hilarious. And I think that's kind of like, just a great point, maybe to end this thing on to say, Hey, you, you have to kind of dare to do some different things. And there's going to be some, some very. Tricky conversations potentially to navigate internally as well. But at least for a company that does 8 billion cans every single year, this is their playbook and there are a couple of software companies who's, you know, emulated some of this as well.
[00:34:12] So that's it.
[00:34:14] Toni: So let's see, let us, let us know what you think about the format of the show. It's a little bit outside of, you know, what we've usually been doing.
[00:34:20] Mikkel: yeah, there was no CAC payback analysis
[00:34:22] or
[00:34:23] Toni: can throw this in for, for, for Google purposes right now, but but otherwise no let us know. I think we'll do two or three more of those.
[00:34:29] And then let's see where we go. Have a good one. Bye bye.
[00:34:32] Mikkel: And thanks for listening. Bye. ​