Red Bull
Appealing to newer, younger subcultures
Red Bull
Project overview
Mission
Red Bull built one of the world’s most distinctive brands around a very specific Gen X / millennial sensibility. As Gen Z moved further into adulthood, Red Bull was well aware that some of the key aspects of its initial growth – exclusivity, an extra dose of cool, mixed with juuuuuust enough gate keeping – simply weren’t going to translate. Whether to change was not in question; HOW to change very much was.
Discovery
A thorough immersion into the core tenets of community building and a hard look at niche audience segments revealed massive, surprising overlaps between traditional Red Bull extreme and alternative sports communities and emerging digital maker cultures (independent video production, online gaming, creative communities, etc.) These audiences shared a common need: infrastructure and support to pursue their passion.
With than lens, we understood that Red Bull should not be talking about giving you wings – it should be helping you get your wings. The category entry points, the events, the content — all of it needed to be rebuilt around that reframe.
Approach
With that reframed view of Red Bull’s role in its audience’s lives, we rejected traditional demographic segmentation and mapped the Gen Z audience through personal aspirations (Make, Experience, Belong) and the specific cultural "playgrounds" where they gathered. We knew that this would be a lengthy process and would require the collection of a staggering amount of data, but we also knew that the path forward was to re-direct Red Bull's activation approach from creating cool experiences to building the infrastructure for genuine communities.
Landing
• Red Bull corporate adopted the strategic framework and launched an entirely new internal community business unit, dedicated to executing this community-first approach globally.
• The audience architecture provided the foundational blueprint for integrating single sign-on (SSO) profiling across Red Bull TV and global event registrations, creating a first-party data engine connecting passion-based audience signals to commercial behavior.
• The brand's strategic expansion into Gen Z subcultures — eSports, digital maker platforms, creator partnerships — coincided with a historic growth period: 10.4% year-over-year volume growth, 7.5 billion cans sold globally, and €6.07 billion in group turnover.