Beverage Marketing Techniques part 2

In Norse mythology, Valkyries like this bitch right here would scoop your dead body up from the field of battle and give you a ride to Valhalla, where they would hook you up with a hornful of mead. This is the role played in today’s world by the Red Bull girls. They can’t just be doing this in Richmond, can they? Do the Red Bull girls visit skate spots all over the world, promoting an “energy drink” owned by some mysterious Austrian dude?
This is how it happened—I was actually having a decent day of skating. Landing shit. kids were ripping, when someone yelled “RED BULL” and everyone ran into the parking lot. There, two young ladies pulled up in one of these


and gave everyone Red Bull. It was fucking weird---It pushed an already decent day to the point where I felt like this dude from Woodstock:

I assumed that this was one of there regular stops, because one of the locals asked them “where’s Roxanne?”

I see—first-name basis.

Then I did some half-assed internet research and I saw that the Red Bull corporation does a shitload of shit with skating. Like that “seek and destroy” shit from a couple years ago that is always on Comcast OnDemand. Canadians might remember that deal when they drove some skaters around Montreal in limos. Oddly enough, the whole Red Bull marketing campaign is reminiscent of olde-tyme ads for Coca-Cola, etc.—in the good olde days when it still contained cocaine:

The ad copy is basically the same. I believe very strongly that if there were olde tyme skaters in the 1880’s, they would have pounded “coca wine” before jumping down that wooden set of stairs at the olde town hall. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

However, they sponsor Joey Brzynski, who is one of the most progressive dudes out there. They also apparently throw garbage bags filled with $100 bills at anything skating-related, like that deal where dudes rode around Montreal in limos and that “Red Bull Seek & Destroy” thing from few years ago that pops up on Comcast OnDemand every now and then. My extremely rudimentary internet research including the official Red Bull Skateboarding Web Site, which I couldn’t tolerate for long. Not only do I prefer Nineties skating and music, I like Nineties web site design as well--very basic html, with plain text—preferably Times New Roman.

So anyway, the Red Bull girls succeeded in getting me to drink their beverage. They were both attractive, but one was seriously a 10. If I were to apply the Beautiful Girls three-point rubric of body/face/personality, she would rate a 10/9/?. I didn’t get to pick her brain. She was definitely attractive enough to be a pharmaceutical sales rep. Truth be told, pharmaceutical sales reps are probably, on average, hotter than strippers. I wonder if this young lady really dug skaters or was just climbing the “sales” ladder until she got to be a pharmaceutical sales rep.

Of course, the group of kooks at the park that stand around, smoke cigs, and drink energy drinks all day were psyched. It’s weird. I still don’t know how I feel about some kooky beverage company owned by some weird Austrian dude dumping dump trucks full of cash into everything related to skating. Then I started to wonder, why don’t skaters just fucking start getting sponsored by beer companies? I don't think I would be remiss in stating that skaters like to drink alcoholic beverages now and then. The answer, I subsequently figured, relates to demographics. The target consumers of NASCAR, for example, are older dudes and redneck sluts. These gentlemen and ladies guzzle beer morning, noon, and night. What is the target consumer of both energy drink retailing and action sports retailing? Dudes age 11-16. See how it’s all connected? Like this dude

would say, "That's some cynical politics right there."