Red Bull Leadership

Red Bull leadership team is headed by Dietrich Mateschitz, its co-founder and long-time CEO, since its establishment in 1987. Visionary and effective leadership style of Dietrich Mateschitz is one of the major factors that fuelled the rapid growth of the business to the point of its current leadership position in the global scale. Dietrich Mateschitz had to challenge the status quo and sceptical views towards the business multiple times during his tenure as Red Bull leader.

It has been noted that Dietrich Mateschitz “eschews bureaucracy and famously rejected the recommendations of a market research report which advised to him to not even try to launch an energy drink”[1]. Similar to Richard Branson of Virgin, Dietrich Mateschitz has succeeded in personification of the business and performed the role of brand ambassador in an efficient manner. Thanks to his personal interest in extreme sports and relentless drive to succeed, Mateschitz was able to create a market for Red Bull when none existed and associated the brand with extreme sports and high performance.

Currently, Red Bull leadership is faced with the challenges of addressing the claims and instances related to negative health implications of Red Bull consumption. It can be argued that the relevance of this specific channel is greater than ever before due to increasing level of consumer health-awareness.  Another leadership challenge in Red Bull relates to a potential leadership succession issue. To be more specific, there is no there no evident candidate to take over 72-year-old Dietrich Mateschitz the leadership role at Red Bull and such a ambiguity may threaten the company’s post-Mateschitz growth prospects.

Red Bull GmbH Report constitutes a comprehensive analysis of Red Bull business strategy. The report illustrates the application of the major analytical strategic frameworks in business studies such as SWOT, PESTEL, Porter’s Five Forces, Value Chain analysis and McKinsey 7S Model on Red Bull. Moreover, the report contains analyses of Red Bull’s marketing strategy and discusses the issues of corporate social responsibility.

[1] Pangarkar, N. & Agarwal, M. (2013) “The Wind Behind Red Bull’s Wings” Forbes, Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesasia/2013/06/24/the-wind-behind-red-bulls-wings/#1e7514003e6c