Just because you’re in the business of selling beverages doesn’t mean you have to talk about beverages. At least not all the time. Many consumer-facing businesses provide offerings that are relatively fixed in terms of newsworthy updates, and so they face a different set of challenges when it comes to engaging audiences and garnering fresh enthusiasm for their brand.
All Apple has to do is hint at a new feature for one of their gadgets and the world plucks out their white in-ear headphones to listen. But how do you cultivate fresh enthusiasm for a product your market already likes exactly how it is? Red Bull has the some of the best answers of our time, and Mashable has the full story.
While Red Bull’s competitor Monster is showing up at trade shows with giant inflatable swimming pools filled with scantily clad “Monster Girls” vigorously gliding down inflatable slides as a testament to the product’s energy-inducing properties, Red Bull is filling a digital content pool with professional grade storytelling materials. But they’re not telling stories about their drink—they’re depicting a lifestyle that appeals to their consumers.
Altimeter Group Analyst Rebecca Lieb summarises Red Bull’s strategy for Mashable: “Look, Red Bull has introduced its content marketing around and about the product, but it is never directly correlated to the drink itself," Lieb says. "Nobody is going to go to a website and spend 45 minutes looking at video about a drink. But Red Bull has aligned its brand unequivocally and consistently with extreme sports and action. They are number-one at creating content so engaging that consumers will spend hours with it, or at least significant minutes."
Red Bull Content Pool covers every inch of the extreme sport spectrum, from mountain biking and motocross to skateboarding and surfing. The website’s headline invites visitors to “Discover a world of sports, culture & lifestyle,” not “caffeine, taurine & glucuronolactone.” They’re formulating content across a wide variety of publishing platforms for a well-defined target market.
Red Bull’s content marketing strategy demonstrates a much deeper dive into their prospects’ motivations, desires and challenges. They’ve humanised their buyers beyond faceless beverage consumers and segmented them by behaviours and ambitions. Not everyone is an extreme sports participant, but these activities require traits like endurance, strength and agility—traits considered aspirational to many buyer categories.
While Red Bull declines to reveal their marketing strategies, one can infer how they may have sketched out a few of their buyer personas:
Buyer Persona 1: Andrea the Athlete
Andrea is a snowboarder who seeks to maximise her time on the days with the best conditions for her sport. She’s serious about constant self improvement and loves challenging herself to new extremes. In order to optimise her time on the mountain and meet her goals, she requires maximum energy and endurance. She’s still in high school and works at a winter apparel retail shop on the side. Andrea’s goals include:
- Learning as many tricks as possible from the Red Bull film “Art of Flight”
- Hitting a minimum 360 degree spins off jumps
- Being able to ride switch on pretty much anything
Red Bull inspires Andrea with extreme snowboarding videos in the sports section of their content portal: Red Bull Content Pool
Buyer Persona 2: Wayne the Worker
Wayne is a man in his mid-30s working a high pressure sales job to contribute to his family’s income. He loves his wife and young children, but sometimes reminisces about the old days when he was free to travel around the country with his mates and do wildly adventurous, risky activities. Wayne works in a highly competitive environment and needs to constantly be on his toes in order to meet his manager’s goals and keep up with his peers. He feels like his meetings with customers go better when he’s feeling energised and mentally acute, but he hates the taste of coffee. He travels a lot and likes to spend a portion of his flights reading about all the things he could be doing if he wasn’t working. Wayne’s goals include:
- Being successful at his job so that his family can maintain high quality of life
- Advancing in his company to meet his personal career ambitions
- Finding time to continue old hobbies in lesser extremes
Red Bull enables Wayne to live vicariously through their article subjects with their publication: Red Bulletin Magazine
Buyer Persona 3: Calvin the Clubber
Calvin is a university student who loves going out on the weekends to burn off stress from his busy week. He and his friends go to clubs and party until late into the night. He loves electronic and hip hop music and has always been fascinated by break dancing, plus it’s what his friends are into. Though he doesn’t break dance himself, he enjoys watching his friends participate and feeling like he’s part of something. Calvin’s goals include:
- Having a really good time
- Being accepted by his peers
Red Bull engages Calvin on their b-boy competition website: Red Bull BC One
Take it from Red Bull and from us—create content that you know your buyer will like. The easiest way to do this is to define who your buyers are using buyer personas. Download our free e-book “Defining Your Target Market Using Buyer Personas” to start the process.
