Red Bull's Instagram Success

Red Bull is a popular energy drink sold by the Australian company Red Bull GmbH. This company, created over 30 years ago in 1987, has the highest market share of any other energy drink in the world -- including Monster, Amp, and so on, selling over 6 billion cans annually. Their famous slogan "it gives you wings," has been inspiration for a plethora of wonderful, creative, and recognizable campaigns and ads throughout the years.

Red Bull has been known to market some greatly successful campaigns using social media platforms. Their success is largely due to an intimate knowledge of their target audience -- namely, athletic, sporty, and busy people. Their website specifically refers to them and their efforts,

"being recognized throughout the world by a variety of people such as top athletes, busy professionals, college students, and travelers on long journeys."

One of their recent campaigns from October of 2017 had them falling to Instagram as a top channel to promote a new edition of their drink to consumers. They used this knowledge of their audience and external environment and released a series of teasers, videos, and images with a yellow filter and the hashtag #thissumer, trying to have people associate the color yellow with summer to better increase their new yellow edition drink sales. As their market revolves around flying and sports, their photos and videos all features grand views, extreme sports, and a lot of movement -- exuding the energy the brand promotes. They also use celebrity endorsements to help promote sales (these celebrities include professional athletes like Blake Griffin, Shaun White, Dallas Friday, and even others like the rapper Eminem). By associating their drink with extreme sports and energetic music, they are able to solidify their image and rise their brand power -- especially with young males.

The social media zones Red Bull focuses on are Social Publishing -- as they develop a large amount of fresh, relevant content to their audience in the form of pictures, cartoons, some featuring celebrity endorsements, and mostly videos as this type of media best portrays the extreme movements they are known for. Instagram is a great place to do this as it is all about the aesthetic and posting through visual media that engages the customer. Red Bull also uses the social media zone Social Relationship -- they have created a deep relationship with their audience, using their love of sports and athleticism to go around the world and take photos of all cultures uniting under their brand and what they stand for. Statistics show over 6 million engaging with only 65 posts, giving an average of just under 100,000 engagements per post (normal engagement for other brands is around 31 thousand)

Today, Instagram is Red Bull's number one channel in terms of social media performance and audience growth and size. They understand the social media landscape as it has evolved throughout the years, and have taken advantage of it. According to Simply Measured, Red Bull's Instagram audience size has grown from 639 thousand followers in 2013 to almost 8.3 million followers today -- a massive difference, beating out other platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and YouTube by a very wide margin.

keep in mind that their audience size has grown even more since October of 2016

Overall, Instagram engages with their audience by posting highly energetic content in the form of pictures and mostly videos with engaging and inspiring captions. They understand the platform and they use it to the best of their ability, amplifying their brand, selling their powerful and energetic lifestyle, and helping them beat out their competition.

 So, does Red Bull give you wings?