Upheavals

What a rush …

Yesterday at the second meeting of the newly dubbed Vista Group (named after the café, not how we operate), Jack Yan, Jim Donovan and I had an interesting discussion about cult brands and their power.

Jim kicked off lunch with the assertion that it was impossible to tailor-make a brand for an audience and for it to continue to feel genuine. In between the distractions of Jack Yan’s hands-on take on lingerie marketing, that led to a discussion about cult and challenger brands, which we agreed did highlight aspects of their personality and particularly their philosophy in order to set themselves apart and attract like-minded customers.

So I was intrigued to read later that the drink that “gives you wiings” continues to climb in popularity. Last year, Red Bull achieved record sales of 3.5 billion cans worldwide. There may be so much caffeine in it that your heart races. It may taste like a sugared up cough syrup when you first try it. And we all know the story of how hard Dietrich Mateschitz had to work to get it into production. But Red Bull is one of very few cult brands that has successfully gone mainstream and continued to thrive.

It is a drink that people have found, rather than it finding people – and it has done that by emphasising the joy of the rush in life. Then kicked that home with support of extreme sports and of course Formula One.

Red Bull is an attitude with a drink, not the other way round in my opinion, and that’s why it has succeeded. That, and retaining private ownership.

By not selling out, in every sense, Red Bull continues to sell up large …

POSTED: Friday, 22 February 2008