Red Bull is everywhere in the sporting world. They boast the planet’s best F1 team. They own a Major League Soccer team and the best small stadium in the world. They excel a man-made flying machines. The brand, in short, is ubiquitous.
The man to credit (or blame): Dietrich Mateschitz.
Sports Business International named the executive the “Most Influential person in the business of sport for 2010.”
Staying under the radar is all part of Mateschitz’s plan. “Unlike many of his contemporaries, Mateschitz has managed to remain almost an unknown figure behind the Red Bull brand; [Richard] Branson and [Bill] Gates, by contrast, have become in many ways the faces of their respective Virgin and Microsoft brands,” Simon Chadwick of Coventry University’s Centre for the International Business of Sport tells SBI. Mateschitz, though, prefers to remain behind the scenes, encouraging greater attention on the brand and the properties themselves, a strategy which to date has paid dividends.”