In 2014, Red Bull agreed to pay $13 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that challenged the promise implied by its famous slogan, “Red Bull gives you wings. ” A New York consumer argued that the advertising had implied a scientifically proven performance advantage over ordinary caffeine—a claim the company had never substantiated. Red Bull did not admit wrongdoing, saying it settled to avoid the costs of continued litigation, but the case exposed a striking gap between the brand’s imagery and its product’s proven effects. For Red Bull, the financial impact was minimal.
The $13 million settlement represented less than half a percent of its annual revenue. The year before the settlement, the company had spent more than $40 million on a single marketing project: sending Felix Baumgartner on a stratospheric jump that broke multiple world records. Perhaps the most surprising part of the story, however, is that the drink behind this global marketing empire did not start with an original recipe, nor did it originate in Austria. The formula was created in 1976 by Chaleo Yoovidhya, a Thai pharmacist and the son of a duck farmer, who developed a tonic for long-haul truck drivers, factory workers, and farmers who needed to stay awake through their shifts.
The drink was called Krating Daeng, meaning red gaur, named after a wild bull considered sacred in Thai culture. It was a thick, sweet, non-carbonated syrup sold in small glass bottles, priced low enough for manual laborers who cared about cost per shift rather than brand prestige. By the end of the 1970s, it had become a staple among Thailand’s working class, but it was virtually unknown anywhere else. That changed because of an exhausted Austrian businessman.
In 1982, Dietrich Mateschitz was working as a marketing director for a German toothpaste manufacturer. On a business trip to Bangkok, severe jet lag prompted a colleague to hand him a small bottle of the local tonic. He later recalled that one bottle eliminated the jet lag. Mateschitz, then 38, saw an opportunity.
He approached Chaleo with a partnership proposal to adapt the drink for Western markets. In 1984, the two founded Red Bull GmbH, each investing $500,000. Chaleo and Mateschitz each held 49% of the company, with the remaining 2% going to Chaleo’s son. Under the agreement, Mateschitz would run the business.
The next three years were spent reworking the formula. The Thai syrup was carbonated, made less sweet, and adjusted to European tastes. The name Krating Daeng was difficult for non-Thai speakers to pronounce, so Mateschitz chose a literal translation: Red Bull. The logo, featuring two bulls and a yellow sun, was carried over almost unchanged from the Thai original.
Notably, the version of Red Bull sold worldwide was not introduced in Thailand until 2007. Before that, the Thai market was served exclusively by the original Krating Daeng, and many Thais still regard the two drinks as separate brands. When the finished product entered the Austrian market in 1987, there was essentially no market for it. The energy drink category did not yet exist in Europe or America.
Investors and associates repeatedly warned Mateschitz that there was no demand for such a product and never would be. His response became a company mantra: “There is no demand for Red Bull, but Red Bull will create it. ”
Instead of relying on traditional advertising, the company began with guerrilla marketing tactics that it rarely mentions today. Employees deliberately left empty Red Bull cans in trendy nightclubs, bars, and on university campuses—on counters, in trash cans, and on window sills.
The idea was simple: if visitors saw dozens of empty cans, they would assume the drink was already popular and selling out, even where actual sales were close to zero. The company also avoided superstar endorsements, instead sponsoring people who lived on the edge of madness—surfers, skateboarders, paragliders, and little-known racers who did not require astronomical fees. For many, the opportunity to pursue their passion professionally was enough. In 1988, Red Bull funded its first major sporting event, a grueling multi-discipline race in the Dolomites.
A year later, the brand signed its first professional athlete, Formula 1 legend Gerhard Berger. The empty-can strategy eventually evolved into official marketing programs, including the famous Red Bull can cars that still drive around university campuses, handing out free drinks during exams, festivals, and night shifts—but now openly, in broad daylight. By the early 2000s, Red Bull dominated a market it had essentially created itself. Yet it continued spending staggering amounts on marketing: around $600 million in 2004, nearly 30% of its annual revenue.
Most major consumer brands spent no more than 10% of revenue on marketing. In 2004, the company pushed its philosophy to the extreme by purchasing the bankrupt Jaguar Racing Formula 1 team for the symbolic price of one British pound. Critics called it an expensive publicity stunt. Mateschitz saw it differently: running the team would cost hundreds of millions of dollars every year, but he considered it the best marketing investment imaginable—not advertising the team, but turning the team itself into a form of advertising.
In 2007, the brand formalized this strategy by launching Red Bull Media House, a full-fledged media company with its own television network, a magazine with a circulation of over five million copies, a record label, and film production. Mateschitz was often credited with a phrase that became a company motto: “Red Bull is a media company that happens to sell an energy drink. ”
The logic was straightforward. The media house produced content—extreme sports films, race broadcasts, and music albums.
That content built cultural recognition for the brand without traditional advertising. That recognition translated into drink sales, and the revenue financed the next wave of content. It was a closed loop in which the marketing budget was not simply spent but effectively invested. By 2015, Red Bull accounted for more than 43% of the global energy drink market, a category it had created three decades earlier.
Today it competes with dozens of cheaper alternatives that exist largely because Red Bull proved the demand was there. The culmination of this strategy was a project that took five years and an estimated $20 million to prepare. On October 14, 2012, Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner ascended to an altitude of 39 kilometers above Roswell, New Mexico, in a pressurized capsule suspended beneath a stratospheric balloon, and then jumped. During four minutes and 20 seconds of free fall, he reached a speed of 1,343 kilometers per hour, becoming the first person to break the sound barrier using only his body without an engine.
The jump broke eight world records, including the highest parachute jump and the highest manned balloon flight, a record previously held by Air Force pilot Joseph Kittinger for half a century. Kittinger, then 84, personally advised Baumgartner and remained in contact with him during the jump. At its peak, eight million people watched the live stream simultaneously on YouTube, an absolute record for concurrent viewers at the time. In a single event, Red Bull generated more organic attention than years of traditional advertising could have produced.
The logo was simply part of the scene, displayed on the chest of a man jumping from the edge of space. Baumgartner’s suit, one of the mission’s most critical components, was developed by a dedicated team of engineers because even the slightest failure at that altitude could have been fatal within seconds. It was far from the only time a Red Bull marketing campaign involved genuine risk to life rather than just creating an impressive image. Returning to the slogan: “Red Bull gives you wings” first appeared in the late 1980s and remained unchanged for decades.
The company repeatedly played with the idea literally, creating commercials in which characters drank Red Bull, grew cartoon wings, and flew away from difficult situations. In 2013, Benjamin Caruthers, a New York consumer, filed a lawsuit claiming that after years of drinking the product, he had never experienced the promised boost in performance—not even one comparable to a cup of coffee—and that the company could not provide scientific evidence to support its claims. In August 2014, Red Bull agreed to the $13 million settlement. Consumers could receive $10 in cash or $15 worth of Red Bull products simply by submitting a claim, without having to prove they had actually purchased the drink.
Lawyers following the case noted an important detail: the lawsuit was not based on the idea that the slogan literally promised feathers and the ability to fly. Instead, the argument was that Red Bull’s advertising had spent years implying the drink provided a scientifically proven performance advantage over ordinary caffeine. That was a verifiable commercial claim rather than a poetic metaphor. After the settlement, the advertising subtly shifted.
The wings remained a metaphor for imagination and possibility rather than a literal promise of increased energy. Interestingly, what might have looked like a reputational catastrophe for almost any other brand barely made a dent in Red Bull’s image. By that point, the company was so strongly associated with skydiving, extreme sports, and conquering mountains that a lawsuit over a lack of wings was perceived more as an amusing curiosity than a serious blow to consumer trust. On October 22, 2022, Dietrich Mateschitz died at age 78 after a long illness—pancreatic cancer—which the company had largely kept private.
At the time, his fortune was estimated at around $27 billion, and the company had sold nearly 10 billion cans worldwide the previous year. Mateschitz never held a controlling stake. He owned 49% of the company, while the remaining 51% was still held by the Yoovidhya family in Thailand, descendants of the pharmacist who had created the original tonic for truck drivers back in 1976. Nearly half a century after the deal was made on a paper napkin in Bangkok, control of the company remained with the Thai side.
Mateschitz’s son, Mark, inherited his father’s stake. At 30 years old, he announced he would focus on his role as a shareholder and entrusted day-to-day management to a three-member board, which he described as a dream team. The following year, Mark received his first dividend of $615 million, instantly becoming Europe’s youngest billionaire. Mark had already spent several years working inside the company in less visible roles, including overseeing its organic products division.
Unlike many heirs to enormous fortunes, he was not an outsider suddenly finding himself in control of a business he knew nothing about. Nevertheless, the decision to choose collective leadership rather than another charismatic figure after the death of its visionary founder sent a notable signal to the industry: even a brand built so heavily around one man’s personality was prepared to operate without him. Perhaps the most ironic part of the entire story is that the original Krating Daeng is still sold in Thailand today. It costs several times less than its Europeanized descendant and remains a working-class drink, exactly what Chaleo Yoovidhya intended it to be almost half a century ago.
While the rest of the world buys the image of adrenaline, skydiving, and breaking the sound barrier, truck drivers in the Thai countryside simply drink what helps them stay awake behind the wheel, exactly as they did in 1976, long before anyone had even coined the term “energy drink. ”
For decades, the brand sold the world the feeling that it had no limits—physical, financial, or reputational. The one time a limit was actually found, in a courtroom where it turned out the wings were only a metaphor, the company paid the settlement and went right back to making commercials about conquering the stratosphere, as if nothing had happened. Unlike brands such as Pepsi, Sprite, or Dr.
Pepper, which spent decades building themselves around a specific taste or formula, Red Bull demonstrated that what is inside the can can be almost secondary to everything built around it: sports, risk, spectacle, and an entire media empire. The company did not invent the formula itself, but it created an entirely new market and culture around it from scratch.