150: How an Energy Drink Became a Media Company (Red Bull, Part 2)

The sports events, the TV channel, the record label, and the man who fell from space — all to sell a 250ml can.

Hey everyone, Chase here from CreativeOS. I’m excited to show you how Red Bull really took things to the next level and what it might mean for you in 2026!

Last week we covered Red Bull's launch: the pricing paradox, the sampling strategy, the focus groups that said no market existed.

By the mid-1990s, Red Bull was profitable and expanding across Europe. The product worked. The word of mouth was real.

But Mateschitz had a problem that's hard to imagine now: nobody in traditional media would take Red Bull's advertising seriously.

TV networks didn't want it. Print publications weren't sure what category to put it in. The mainstream advertising establishment had no framework for an energy drink that cost more than beer.

So Mateschitz decided to build his own media.

In this issue, you'll learn:

• How Red Bull's event strategy created marketing content before "content marketing" was a phrase

• Why owning media properties gave Red Bull an advantage that ad spend couldn't buy

• What the Felix Baumgartner space jump reveals about brand as story

The event strategy.

In 1991, Red Bull launched the Red Bull Flugtag — a competition where amateur teams built homemade flying machines and launched them off a platform above water.

It was ridiculous. That was the point.

The event generated local press, crowd photos, and the kind of genuine human spectacle that money can't manufacture. It was also branded entirely by Red Bull without a single traditional ad unit being purchased.

Then came cliff diving. Motorcycle racing. Air racing. Snowboarding competitions in locations a helicopter could barely reach. Each event was designed to be visually spectacular, sharable before social media made sharing easy, and completely owned by Red Bull.

Mateschitz's insight: don't buy attention from media companies. Create events that are the media.

By the time Red Bull had its own Formula One team in 2004, this logic was fully developed. F1 cars are moving billboards doing 200+ mph. Every podium finish is a press moment. Every race is content. Red Bull didn't sponsor an F1 team — they built one, and then won four consecutive world championships with it between 2010 and 2013.

The logo wasn't on someone else's car. The car was Red Bull's.

Red Bull Media House.

In 2007, Mateschitz formalized what had been building for fifteen years and launched Red Bull Media House.

It was a fully functioning media company. Television production. Magazine publishing. A record label. A digital content studio.

The Red Bulletin — the lifestyle magazine — was distributed in 14 countries and available on newsstands. Not as a brand publication mailed to subscribers. As an actual magazine that competed for rack space with GQ and Wired.

Red Bull TV broadcast original programming: documentaries, live sports coverage, adventure content. Not ads. Programming.

The logic sounds insane until you trace it. By owning the media, Red Bull controlled every context in which its brand appeared. There was no negotiating with a network over placement. No risk of your 30-second spot running next to a competitor's. No editorial voice that might frame your brand in a way you didn't choose.

Every piece of content Red Bull published made the drink make more sense. You watched a Red Bull documentary about a base jumper and you understood — viscerally, without being told — why someone might want a product called "wings."

The content didn't describe the brand. It embodied it.

The man who fell from space.

On October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner stepped out of a capsule 128,000 feet above the earth — roughly 24 miles up — and jumped.

He broke the sound barrier on the way down. He landed safely in New Mexico. Eight million people watched on YouTube simultaneously, making it the most-watched live stream in YouTube's history at the time.

The project was called Red Bull Stratos. It had taken five years of planning, partnerships with NASA scientists and aerospace engineers, and approximately $65 million to execute.

It generated approximately $500 million in media coverage.

Every piece of that coverage included two words: Red Bull.

This is the endpoint of the media company strategy. Not a product placement, not a sponsorship, not an ad. An actual world record human achievement that happened to be sponsored by an energy drink — and because of how completely Red Bull had built its brand around human performance, nobody questioned the connection.

A bank can't own a space jump. A software company can't own a space jump. But an energy drink called Red Bull, whose tagline is "gives you wings," whose entire brand is built around pushing physical limits? A man jumping from space is the most literal expression of that brand identity possible.

We rebuilt the CreativeOS interface…

Not because the old one was broken - because the work you're making with it outgrew it.

Faster. Cleaner. Built around the way creative operators actually work - in systems, not sessions.

AI Lab. Iteration Engine. Teams & Projects. 20,000+ templates.

CreativeOS is where you go to actually build them.

Try it free → (50% off this month only)

The Red Bull Creative Playbook

• Create the category before you compete in it. There was no energy drink market in 1987. Mateschitz didn't enter a market — he created one. Category creation requires ignoring research that measures existing demand.

• Price is positioning. Red Bull's premium price wasn't a margin decision — it was a brand statement. Higher price creates separation from commodity alternatives and signals that this product does something others don't.

• Own the context, not just the content. Buying media placements means renting someone else's audience. Building media properties means owning the context in which your brand appears. Over time, owned context compounds in ways that paid reach doesn't.

• Let the brand story be a literal expression of the brand promise. "Wings" is a metaphor for energy and possibility. A man jumping from space with a Red Bull logo is not a metaphor — it's the metaphor made real. The most powerful brand moments are when the literal and the symbolic collapse into one thing.

• Events are content before content marketing existed. The Flugtag, the cliff diving series, the F1 team — all of these were marketing strategies before "content strategy" was a job description. Mateschitz understood that spectacular experiences generate press, conversation, and memory in ways that ad units can't.

Keep Creating,

Chase

P.S. — Sign up for our events calendar so you can get access to all the experts we work with helping you build your creative intelligence in real time.

P.P.S. — A few friends have been working with Automatic, an AI integration agency, on custom automations and internal systems. What they've built is genuinely impressive. Worth a look if you're trying to turn AI into real operational leverage instead of another tab open in your browser.