Red Bull - They do have wings!

Who does not know Red Bull? The popular energy drink, which originated from Austria in 1987, has managed to become one of the highest selling energy drinks in the world. It might come as a surprise that Red Bull not only gives information about its energy drinks products, but has also created its own media production company. Red Bull Media House was launched in 2007. Hence, our main focus will not be on Red Bull as an energy drink producer, but on Red Bull as a media producer through the Red Bull Media House. In this blogpost we will look at Red Bull as an industry that has gone beyond its own boundaries of the beverage industry by becoming more and more cultural. They  might even be seen as a new hybrid intersection where general industries meet cultural industries, thus introducing a new model.

In this blogpost we would like to make use of the evolution of the concept of culture industries outlined by Raúl Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, Full Professor at the Department of Communication and Social Psychology, University of Alicante (Spain), in 2014. We will mainly use the distinctions being made between several terms, starting from the notion that “culture industry” should be re-assessed but should not, however, be replaced by a different term, because its origin ought to be taken into account. Rodríguez-Ferrándiz states that the culture industries today emphasize production in a post-Fordist society (338), where leisure, entertainment, and creativity are all closely related. We would also like to use the article “Remediating Creativity: Performance, Invention, Critique” 2012 by Sarah Kember, Professor of New Technologies of Communications and Joanna Zylinska, Professor of New Media and Communications, both of them at Goldsmiths, University of London. They argue, among other things, that creativity needs to be ‘re-claimed’ by media studies. In their analysis they work with Henri Bergson’s notion of ‘mediation’. That is a set of processes through which generative media forms can develop (173).

Red Bull Media House

Red Bull Media House aims at presenting an array of media products and states on its website that: “As an umbrella brand, we offer a wide range of premium media products and compelling content across media channels as diverse as TV, mobile, digital, audio, and print, with core media offerings that appeal to a global audience”. Red Bull Media House distributes content on their website - which has been personalised according to different countries - and have also created their own branch for television distribution named Red Bull TV. Red Bull TV offers action, sports, culture, and lifestyle programming all of which  have the purpose of appealing to a wide global audience. Aside from television, Red Bull Media House also produces a huge variety of moving image formats, including short non-fiction and news clips, magazines, reality formats, full-length feature films for TV, online, cinema, music and home entertainment channels. These examples can all be categorized as media convergence (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 333).

Their motto “Red Bull gives you wings” has gone far  beyond being a mere catchy slogan to attract consumers. The slogan has become the embodiment of all of the norms and values that Red Bull is promoting and of what they want to represent. Their products are now able to communicate and bring across an entire image, something that has become quite important in today's consumer market (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 330).  It can be argued that Red Bull used creativity to invent a new concept; not necessarily the concept of being original by branching out into media production, since many other companies such as Disney have already done so (Kember & Zylinska 174). Red Bull’s novelty comes from the way in which they managed to leap from a branch in the beverage industry into media industry and production by successfully creating their own image and branding themselves as adventurous thrill seekers with an appetite for life. Red Bull no longer just sells the product; Red Bull is the product.

This kind of development is not unique for Red Bull, but marks the way in which many industries have been overflowing into other industries or adopting parts of the culture industries in order to maximize profit. Definitions that used to distinguish the creative and cultural industries from other industries no longer fully apply. We agree with Raúl Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, when he mentioned that: “we have passed from the anguish and disappointment Adorno felt on seeing the creative act of the artist swallowed up by the logic of industry, to qualifying the entire industry as “creative,” to place creativity itself at the very heart of this industry”. He argues that there have been many changes in the development of industries over time and states that different terms used to distinguish parts of the industries that have changed or no longer apply (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 328).

“Not only do we create content and operate media platforms with direct consumer impact, we also offer a vast range of targeted business opportunities for partnerships with other companies, media partners and affiliates.” - Red Bull Media House

According to Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, the difference between the term “culture industry” and “mass culture”, lies with the way the former puts the emphasis on production while the latter focuses more on reception (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 328). Making use of Rodríguez-Ferrándiz’ definitions, these characterizations of ‘culture industry’ and ‘mass culture’ classify the Red Bull brand as an industry that focuses on producing content, while simultaneously being part of mass culture because it clearly has importance for reception - or in this case “direct consumer impact”.

“To a certain degree the culture industries have taught the other branches of industry to pseudo-individualize themselves to gain competitiveness, differentiation, and in surcharge for the value that has been added to the product. Culture may well have become industrialized, but it is no less true that in the same process, industry has “culturalized” itself” (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 329-330). In this sense, creativity is at the heart of almost every modern industry today, since they need to find a way to merge with parts of other industries and adapt for the purpose of commercialization and in order to appear attractive to consumers (Rodríguez-Ferrándiz 338). Therefore Red Bull, with the creation of Red Bull Media House, clearly opted to dive into these new industry models and chose to ‘culturalize’ themselves.

In conclusion, we have used the evolution of several concepts of culture industries and previous distinctions between them to demonstrate that the combination of these closely-related terms are heading towards general industries practices whereas at the same time, many other branches are becoming more and more cultural. Red Bull is a good example of a different branch, namely that of beverage production, that is transgressing its boundaries and going in the direction of cultural production. This example shows that there seems to be a new model where the boundaries between different industries are fading.

Proposition: Could Red Bull Media House be seen as a new hybrid intersection where general industries and culture industries meet, therefore introducing a new model?

Works Cited:

Kember, S. & Zylinska, J. (2012) ‘Remediating Creativity: Performance, Invention, Critique’, in: Life After New Media: Mediation as a Vital Process. Cambridge: The MIT Press: 173-200.

Rodríguez-Ferrándiz, R., (2014) Culture Industries in a Postindustrial Age:

Entertainment, Leisure, Creativity, Design, Critical Studies in Media Communication, 31:4, 327-341. DOI: 10.1080/15295036.2013.840388

Links:

http://www.redbullmediahouse.com/services/advertising.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HkYj8Y0OLw

http://www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideo/115550/Space_Dive__Red_Bull_Stratos_Documentary_BBC/

Initials:

GK, AL, RO