Year 12 IB Extended Essays 2018

advertising theme not only helps to promote the core the function of their product, but also

indicates that they are familiar with how to most appropriately market towards their target

audience. Red Bull themselves are active across the majority of the popular social networks,

including Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. All of these platforms are used by Red

Bull to upload content relating to their product, more specifically, videos and images of

famous and ordinary people alike playing sports or doing extreme stunts. From the content

which they have produced, Red Bull is attempting to connect with players and fans of all

sports, including niche activities ex. skateboarding. ! Over the past four years, Red Bull has amassed immense following numbers across their

social network accounts. By June 2014, Red Bull had already accumulated the largest

following on Instragram of any energy drink and even soft drink company at 1.4 million, had

the third most Facebook followers of any drink company at 4.6 million, had the third most

Twitter followers of any drink company at 1.6 million, and the most YouTube video views of

any company at 906 million over a total of 4,215 videos (Twitonomy, 2014) (Rudd Center,

2014) (Social Baker, 2014) . Clearly, even in just 2014, Red Bull had already experienced

social media marketing success with the large number of followers that they accrued even

against the likes of other extremely well known brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Part of

this success stems from how Red Bull was able to effectively predict and adapt to changes

occurring in their external environment. Red Bull recognized the rise in functionality and

popularity of the Internet, technology, and social networks in the early 2000s, and ultimately

decided that social media marketing would help increase their market share. These social

network followers held by Red Bull would continue to snowball into the future. A few years

later, as of April 2018, Red Bull has 47.8m followers on Facebook, 8.3 millions followers on

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