The New Extreme

Austrian marketing maverick Dietrich Mateschitz found

Jason Carlton tucked into an 82-foot leap at the Red Bull Cliff Diving competition in Monaco in June.  Sports and News International/AP

On an insane-o-meter, this race rates a nine." Twenty-year-old Matt Kringel was muttering this last February before a practice run at Red Bull Crashed Ice, a cutthroat skating competition on a ski slope just outside Duluth. The question was not whether Kringel or the 64 other men and women careering down Spirit Mountain would make it to the finish, but who their beneficiaries were. "If I bite it," allowed the college junior, "it won't surprise me."

A cross between speed skating, luge and Roller Derby, Crashed Ice played out on a slick, steep 1,000-foot course not unlike Kringel's digestive tract -- both were tied in knots. About every 37 seconds the skaters, in groups of four, would slam into walls and crumple in horrific pileups. The few hundred spectators on hand would shout encouragement . . . and condolences.

Of all the extreme events on this year's sporting calendar, Crashed Ice was perhaps the most extremely dopey. The spectacle was one of dozens staged by energy drink Red Bull in its struggle to "revolutionize" the increasingly corporate and TV-centric realm of extreme sports.

The Crashed Ice course was like something out of Greek mythology: Skaters plunged through a maze of corkscrewy turns and narrow, spiraling tunnels. You half-expected a Minotaur to pop out from behind one of the padded plywood boards that lined the track.

Ah, the Minotaur. Part bull, part man, the fearsome beast dwelled in a labyrinth so artfully designed that only its architect could find his way. It fed on youths until it was slain by Theseus, a mortal who unwound a ball of thread as he entered the lair so he could retrace his route.

In the modern world of energy drinks, Red Bull is a kind of Minotaur, a caffeine-pumped monster with a 65% market share and annual sales of more than $1 billion. The success of this pricey (an 8.3-ounce can sells for up to $6 in bars, where it's often mixed with vodka in a buzz-building cocktail) and sugary (it tastes like a melted lollipop) concoction is equal parts man and bull. In the spirit of Theseus, who killed the monster of myth, we will attempt to find the beauty and the beast in Red Bull by threading our way around the information on the side of its can.

"Red Bull's effects have been recognized by world-class athletes"

The man part of the Red Bull story is marketing maverick Dietrich Mateschitz, who created the company and a new beverage category. Tanned, suave and reclusive by design, the 58-year-old Austrian had made a good living selling toothpaste in the Far East, but he dreaded becoming a "gray man in a gray suit." On a flight to Thailand in the early 1980s Mateschitz read that the richest man in Japan had made his fortune from a syrupy picker-upper that was said to cure hangovers. Mateschitz realized he could make an even better living by selling energy.

As it happened, a Bangkok toothpaste distributor Mateschitz knew was peddling a similar drink called Kratingdaeng, or "Red Bull." Mateschitz got its rights, added fizz and changed the formula for Western tastes. "Fifty percent of our test group was crazy about Red Bull, and 50 percent said it tasted terrible," he says. "I thought, Great! You can't beat ambivalence. It's attention, it's controversy, it's discussion that keeps a product alive."

To build brand image Mateschitz used grassroots sales tactics that got college students and nightclubbers to roll over in sweet surrender, like puppies awaiting chest rubs. His approach banks on crudely drawn cartoon ads, sample-wielding proselytizers and the myth that Red Bull is an Un-corporation that eschews marketing altogether. It's a neat parlor trick that takes tons of marketing to pull off.

At the heart of Mateschitz's promotional campaign are niche sports -- the hairier the better. Last year Red Bull plowed $80 million into sponsoring hundreds of alterna-athletes, from street lugers to big-wave kayakers, and underwriting dozens of stunts and competitions: kiteboarding from Key West to Cuba, motocrossing in Spanish bullrings, wakeboading through underground Missouri caverns and Flugtagging(flying in a homemade air machine) over San Francisco Bay.

"We encourage people to come to us with harebrained ideas," says Jack Dadam, Red Bull's executive vice president of sales. "We reject a lot, but we approve a lot too." Among the events funded were mountain-bike races down cliffs in Utah and B.A.S.E. jumping off sheer 4,000-foot cliffs on Baffin Island. This summer B.A.S.E. jumper Felix Baumgartner plans to strap a carbon-fiber wing to his back and glide the length of the English Channel. Red Bull will foot the bill.

Some of Red Bull's events, such as the Flugtag, are witnessed by hundreds of thousands of people; others, like Depth Charge, are seen by just a handful. Many have names that hint at anarchy: Red Bull Mountain Mayhem, Red Bull Rampage, Red Bull Trash and Crash. "There's an edge of danger to the sports we do," says Kristen Ulmer, a former competitive free skier who has appeared in more than 20 free-skiing videos. "Our stuff isn't mainstreamed or made-for-TV." Climb an ice tower in the X Games and you've got a top rope -- so what if you fall? "If we screw up, we're gonna get a compound fracture or die," Ulmer says. "Kids can really relate."

"Stimulates the metabolism"

The bull part of the Red Bull story grew out of rumors about the drink's contents: that each skinny silver can contains the caffeine of 20 cups of coffee; that the drink is addictive and leads to hard drug use; that it's liquid Viagra; that its secret ingredient, taurine, is bull urine, or bull semen, or bull testosterone. Red Bull doesn't encourage such speculation but doesn't exactly discourage it either.

"People ask me if it's true that Red Bull is made from bull testicles," says salesman Robert Hohensinn, the company's very first employee. "I tell them sure, but only two testicles to a can." In the early days he worried that the gossip might hurt sales. "Then I realized it actually helped," Hohensinn says. "The more teachers hated Red Bull, the more their pupils had to drink it."

Red Bull's athletes drink it devoutly and buy into its mythology religiously. "It gets you up for things you don't want to do," says ice climber Will Gadd. "When your mind wants to wander, it helps you remember what you're doing." Which makes Red Bull sound like a kind of recreational Ritalin.

"Vitalizes body & mind"

The skydivers and paragliders rolling and looping through the skies over Chicago last August were not reenacting the invasion of Normandy. This was V-day, not D-Day. "We've come to North Avenue Beach to vitalize the lakefront," said a Red Bull flack while scanning the heavens with binoculars.

The vitalizing she referred to was a three-day aerobatic tournament called Wings over Chicago, which reinforced the slogan Red Bull gives you wings. Thirty-two extreme aerialists had converged on Lake Michigan to vie for $16,000 in prizes. All swooped down at speeds as fast as 70 mph, hoping to land on a small floating platform 50 yards offshore. Their jumps had a high degree of risk and a low margin of error.

Suspended beneath soft wings, or foils, paragliders typically take off from mountaintops. But on this gusty late-summer afternoon they were being towed by speedboats and reaching a height of 1,500 feet before being let go. Their flips, stalls and partial collapses were judged for precision and difficulty on a 10-point scale, much like Olympic figure skating.

The skydivers dropped out of planes from 4,000 feet. Their scores depended largely on how far they glided after descending to an altitude of 10 feet above the water. "We're into pushing the extreme envelope," said Red Bull events director Paul Crandell. "We've given a couple of extreme sports a fun twist and revolutionized them."

The Windy City wingding set Red Bull back a cool $400,000. The promotion was so low-key that few of the 10,000 beach bums were aware they were witnessing a sporting contest. There wasn't a scoreboard in sight. "If we were a publicly owned company, some bean counters would say this isn't cost-effective," Dadam said. "They'd tell us to spend $20 million on a TV commercial that runs during the Super Bowl and reaches 30 million people. Well, we're privately owned, and we don't look at it that way."

"Increases concentration and improves reaction speed"

The "ultimate attention deficit disorder lifestyle" is how the 35-year-old Gadd describes his two favorite pastimes, ice climbing and paragliding. Swigs of Red Bull's turbocharged tonic, he says, sharpened his focus in the late 1990s, when he established the 10 toughest ice routes in the world, and in 2000, when he coasted on thermal updrafts from the Pacific to the Atlantic over two months -- a distance of nearly 3,500 miles.

The latest Gadd fly covered a world-record 263 miles of remote Texas hill country. Fueled by Red Bull and carried by wind and thermals only, he kept aloft for 10 hours and 38 minutes. Flying low, he needed to stay alert: At times power lines loomed heart-thumpingly close and his body shook with fear. Red Bull, he says, concentrated his mind wonderfully.

Gadd says the swag he gets from Red Bull buys time, which allows him to get results. "That's the biggest gift," he says. "Red Bull gives me the freedom to dream a little larger, maybe a little longer."

"With Taurine"

Slugging back his fourth Red Bull of the afternoon during the Crashed Ice prelims, Kringel said, "This stuff is addictive. What's in it, nicotine?" The first time Ulmer chugged Red Bull, she got more hopped up than a fourth-grader on a Quik bender. "One can, and I turned into a maniac for five hours," she recalls. "My personality was multiplied by a thousand. I was centered and excitable but not jittery. It was pretty cool. I felt like I was breaking the law."

Ulmer would have been, too, if she hawked Red Bull in some countries. The kicky elixir is not for sale in Canada, Denmark, Norway or France. Part of this is due to marketing restrictions, part to bad buzz. Red Bull has courted controversy in Switzerland, Sweden and Hong Kong, where a half-dozen people have collapsed and died after downing the brew, often laced with booze. The company insists there is no scientific evidence suggesting a link between its drink and the deaths, and that the likely causes were exertion and preexisting medical conditions.

Of course, there's also no scientific evidence to suggest that synthetic taurine, Red Bull's magic bull-et, is anything but a marketing gimmick. After all, taurine is just an amino acid that the body replenishes on its own. As for Red Bull's claim that taurine promotes detoxificatoin, the German Institute for the Protection of Consumer Health calls it "misleading," and the company itself admits that taurine's "main function is simply that of a flavor enhancer."

The real source of Red Bull's energy boost is sugar and caffeine. For all the hype, one can has slightly less caffeine than a cup of Starbucks coffee and slightly more than an Excedrin Extra Strength tablet.

"Please recycle"

What's most endearing about the Red Bull Flugtag is the fact that it's so thoroughly pointless. Flugtag, which means "flying day" in German, is a competition in which contestants build and power their own flying machines. In theory Flugtag fliers launch themselves off a platform and soar over water. In practice most of their contraptions don't so much soar over water as nosedive into it.

Red Bull has been holding Flugtag in various foreign ports of call since 1991. The event made its U.S. debut last October at a pier off the Embarcadero in San Francisco. "We want to show the fun side of Red Bull," said Dadam.

Thirty-five teams boldly took (or attempted to take) to the skies. There was a surfboard on wheels propelled by a 20-foot-long rubber band of surgical tubing and an outsized martini glass with a James Bond double dangling from its rim by a bungee harness. There was a flying toaster, a flying chef who catapulted himself from a frying pan and a cold warrior straddling a massive Red Bull can and rejoicing in the title Dr. Strangebull. There were airships fashioned from old PVC pipe, papier-m‰chŽ, Styrofoam, duct tape, twine, chicken wire, chewing gum and staples. Lots of staples.

No bull-flinger defied gravity for long. "Baby, I'm driving my '57 Cadillac off the pier and all the way to Graceland," said Flying Elvis. Alas, the jumpsuited King leaped off the ramp and fell straight into the chilly bay and the waiting arms of scuba divers. He had hardly left the building.

When the final Flugtagger had flown, Dadam gazed out across the dock strewn with bobbing wings and broken dreams. "I look around and see 25,000 people," he said. "Was this worth three quarters of a million dollars? I'd say yes."

"Not recommended for children"

No red bull athlete has taken the company for a bigger ride than Randy Laine. Two years ago the jet skier straddled a 70-foot wave in the Pacific Ocean. To even be allowed aboard the Red Bull observation boat, one had to sign a waiver that began: "I expect to be killed on this trip...."

This winter Laine is counting on El Niño to stir up the sea enough for him to tackle a 100-footer. "Want to know how the Red Bull Tour differs from Jackass?" he asks. "When our 'elite' athletes attempt the insane, they've got experience."

Since 1999 Red Bull's North American extreme gods have assembled in late autumn for a bull session that borders on the Dionysian. Tales of revelry are floating around, many involving empty tequila bottles, police chases and dives off hotel balconies. "We've been kicked out of Mexican strip clubs!" Ulmer says wistfully. "Do you know how ridiculous you have to be to be kicked out of a Mexican strip club?"

The renegades met up most recently in Las Vegas. They kept trouble at bay by attending race car school, learning to drive BMW roadsters and scaled-down Indy cars. The only man to come close to mischief was off-road rallier Steve Barlow, a three-time winner of the Baja 1000. His racer hit a concrete pillar. At the awards banquet Barlow accepted a trophy cobbled from a crumpled spoiler.

Red Bull athletes may be team players, yet they almost never compete in team sports. "Uniforms make us suspicious," says marketing director Norbert Kraihamer. "Extreme sports are better suited to expressing the individual."

To be considered Red Bull-worthy, an individual must win, but not consistently. "It's not about being Number 1," Kraihamer says. "We look for influential sportsmen who make statements." Red Bull likes crazy, just not crazy reckless. "Most of us are decent, college-educated, taxpaying citizens without death wishes," says Gadd. "We know that if you die, the game's over. [If we didn't,] we'd just play in traffic."

When looking for a downhill mountain biker, Red Bull turned down two-time world downhill champ Missy Giove, famed for her fuchsia hair, unstilled tongue and ovaries-to-the-wall exuberance. Missy the Missile took a stunt-flier approach to racing: If she didn't crash, she usually won.

Instead Red Bull signed Marla Streb, an articulate crash avoider with a master's degree in molecular biology. What she lacks in fearlessness, she makes up for in schmooze. "There's a sense of honor about being with Red Bull," she says of the handshake deal that bestows bonuses based on race results and press coverage. "Nothing is ever signed."

The world demands a certain amount of conformity, and Red Bull athletes (there are about 360) tend to conform only to themselves. Still, they have a few things in common. "We want the type of athlete who is always about to be fired by the coach but is too gifted," says Kraihamer. "The ideal candidate is, in a way, the same as Dietrich."

"Made in Austria"

Erupting from two interlocking volcanoes high in the Austrian Alps is a massive sculpture of stampeding bulls. In a valley between the cones is Red Bull's new headquarters.

Mateschitz works in a less ostentatious building next door. Climb the stairs and you're confronted with a vast painting of a labyrinth. Lurking within its blind alleys and intricate passageways is a shadowy figure, a red Minotaur. "Every boy is fascinated by mythology," says Mateschitz from his office doorway. "I was most fascinated by Zeus, the king of the gods. When he came down to earth to see Europa, he changed into a bull."

The father of Red Bull is a lifelong bachelor -- born, naturally, under the sign of Taurus -- whose habit it is to clutch privacy about him like a leather jacket. He appears in daylight about as often as Dracula. A few longtime employees swear they have never seen him in person. "Whenever possible, I escape," Mateschitz says. "Being anonymous is a high priority. I hate to be recognized."

At heart Mateschitz is as much an adventurer as his athletes are. Last year he broke his left shoulder on a motocross in the Tunisian desert. He loves Red Bull (he drinks eight to 10 cans a day) and speed in all forms. To house the firm's collection of vintage airplanes, he's building a humongous glass hangar at Salzburg Airport. The fleet comprises the Flying Bulls Aerobatics Team, which performs at air shows all over Europe.

Mateschitz's current crusade is Grand Prix racing. He hopes to sell it in the U.S., where the sport has never taken hold: NASCAR Nation deems the European open-wheel style too tony, too predictable. And there are no Yanks to root for.

To change that Mateschitz founded a European motor sports academy. Separately, Danny Sullivan, who won the Indianapolis 500 in 1985, chooses four Formula One prospects a year to drive for Red Bull. They are competing this year on European junior circuits. The most promising driver has a made-for-marquee name: Scott Speed.

Though the project's likelihood of failure is high, Mateschitz thinks it's worth a shot. Of course, this is a man who while waiting for Red Bull to receive licensing approval in Austria tried to introduce doughnuts in the land of the Sacher torte (nobody bit) and recently launched LunAqua, spring water purportedly bottled under a full moon for extra energy. "I'm a marketing person," he says. "In the worst case, if it doesn't work, what have I lost? Pride? Money? All those things can be replaced. The challenge is to build a mystique."

Or, as the Red Bull slogan puts it, to find wings. "The most important thing in life is to find fulfillment," Mateschitz says. "There are many possible paths that lead to dead ends or put you in the wrong direction. You keep moving for stability and happiness. For me Red Bull was the perfect path."

Issue date: August 4, 2003

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