So I know that I promised some trivia I discovered while researching zip codes and place abbreviations. And that one is still coming, it’s just that it is quite a bit more complicated than I first thought. So it’s taking me a little while to learn it myself. In the meantime, here’s something I came across last time I was bored at Buffalo Wild Wings.
If you were to ask just about anyone what the top two soft drink brands in the world are, you’d probably get a quick response – Coca-Cola and Pepsi. And yes, those two would be correct. As of 2022, the Coca-Cola brand was worth about $35 billion, and Pepsi $21 billion. But if you asked somebody to guess the third most valuable soft drink brand, they’d probably struggle to come up with one. Dr. Pepper currently sits at #8 (though it deserves #1), and Sprite is #7. If you remind them that “soft drinks” include just about any non-alcoholic beverage, maybe they’d guess something like Gatorade (#6). But no, the number 3 most valuable soft drink brand in the world, coming in at $7 billion, is Red Bull.
To anyone who is surprised by this, just consider the hundreds of millions of dollars Red Bull spends on sponsorships each year. Everything from extreme sports to music festivals, video game tournaments to people jumping out of stratospheric balloons, Red Bull wants their name on it. They even have an arts fellowship program in Detroit.
Now, keep in mind that brand value is not the same thing as revenue or profitability. Brand value is simply how much a brand would be worth if you were to sell it all at once. Red Bull does have lower revenue than some of these other companies. However, since their founding in 1987, their dedication to promoting their brand has now made them amongst the most recognized soft drinks in the world. In fact, they have an estimated 42.5% market share of the energy drink market.
Ultimately, I think the lesson here is that when a field is dominated by just one or two people, it’s always worth seeing who’s next on the ladder. As a bit of bonus trivia, Red Bull is actually an Austrian company, but the drink itself originates from Thailand.
I made a Flickr account to share my photography. If you’re interested in checking it out, you can find it here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/themodernpolymath/. I’ll just posted some photos of the Fourth of July fireworks I took earlier this week.
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