07/20/2026
Brand marketers...This one will make ya rethink your entire content budget. đĽ Hot take... is not an energy drink company.
They havenât been for a long time. Theyâre a media company that happens to sell energy drinks. And the gap between how THEY think about content and how most brands think about content is staggering.
launched in 2007 as a full-scale media operation, producing entertainment that stands completely on its own merit. Not branded video. Not a content series. An actual media company, built inside a beverage brand.
Then came Stratos. đŞ˝
Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space, broadcast live to over 8 million concurrent YouTube viewers. In the six months that followed, US Red Bull sales jumped 7%, adding $1.6 billion in revenue.
You might say âPR STUNT!â I say content strategy with results.
With 27.5 million subscribers, Red Bull averages on a monthly basis around 1.6 million views, with individual videos ranging from about 209K on the low end to over 25 million at their peak.
And worth noting for context, their videos average around 22-27 minutes long, which makes those numbers even more impressive. People arenât just clicking, theyâre actually watching.
So, hereâs the playbook most brands are sleeping on:
Red Bull doesnât sponsor events. It creates them. Thereâs a massive difference between putting your logo on someone elseâs moment and owning the moment entirely.
And the standard they hold themselves to? Content that audiences seek out and consume voluntarily because it has intrinsic value, not because itâs attached to a promotion.
What lifestyle does your brand actually enable? What experience could you create that your audience would show up for? And if you stripped your logo off your content, would anyone still watch it?
That last one will tell you everything.
If youâre interested in breaking down Red Bullâs playbook and applying it to your brandâs content strategy, DM me and letâs get to chatting!