Red Bull’s Logo Can “Give You Wings”

According to a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology by two Boston College professors, Red Bull’s logo alone can “can give you wings” even if you don’t drink a drop. Their findings indicated that consumers who were exposed to the brand displayed characteristics associated with it.

Let’s look at how it worked: Researchers had volunteers play a car racing video game with nearly identical race cars. However, there was only one difference in that each car had been decorated with a different brand logo and color scheme. Unlike the car decored with Red Bull’s logo, the other cars represented Guinness, Tropicana, and Coca Cola.

As a result of this only difference, players controlling the Reb Bull car displayed characteristics often attributed to the brand – speed, power, and risk-taking – and the results were both positive and negative. In some cases, the drivers sped around the course faster than other cars. In others, their recklessness caused them to crash and lose valuable time.

This behaviour is known as “non-conscious brand priming”, according to professors S. AdamBrasel and James Gips. It means that the personality of a brand can unconsciously “push” or “nudge” a consumer to act in ways consistent with that personality when exposed to brand imagery.

The researchers also point to search results on the website brandtags.net, where users enter words or phrases they associate with brands. These results show that the 9 of the 40 most commonly occurring terms for Red Bull deal with speed and power and 4 pertain to risk-taking and recklessness. In comparison, the 14 other most popular drink brands at brandtags.net average less than one speed or power associated word per brand and almost zero risk-taking or recklessness associated words per brand.

This should be taken for granted. Because it seems compatible with the fact that Red Bull has built its brand identity around sponsored promotions such as cliff diving, street luge contests, car racing, and a full-contact ice-skating obstacle course known as “Crashed Ice.”