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Red Bull Gives You Wings. It’s one of the most famous advertising slogans of all time. A metaphor for the boost you can expect after taking a sip. Although some people in 2014 took it literally and Red Bull had to settle for $13 Million in a class action lawsuit over deceptive marketing. Red Bull has since clarified that no customer should expect literal wings after a few sips.
$13 million is not a high cost for all of the coverage that this case brought. It’s also nothing compared to what Red Bull spends on advertising every year. With a $3 billion yearly spend, Red Bull has a bigger budget than McDonald’s, VW or Adidas. If you take it as a percentage of sales (about 30%) it’s more than any other major corporation on the planet.
Where does all of this money go? Well, most of it ends up in sports.
This follows a strategy. Red Bull wants to be associated with adrenaline and fun. So, it invests in Formula 1, snowboarding and sends a man to the edge of space and lets him jump.
And then there’s football. That one is more of a mystery. Football can be entertaining, but it isn’t exactly a sport for adrenaline junkies. And Red Bull doesn’t just own one team, it owns several across the globe, from RB Leipzig to the New York Red Bulls.
Why would Red Bull invest in football? Well, it’s all thanks to Franz Beckenbauer and Bayern Munich.