What’s the critical thinking issue raised by the case?

1. 
   What’s the critical thinking issue raised by the case?
   

This first 3 paragraphs in the case describes how Red bull do marketing communication through plenty of sponsorship in sports competition and extreme sports. Using this strategy, Red Bull combine brand value with advertisements perfectly. Besides, Red Bull promotes marketing promotion by becoming a participant in other industries.

In 2007, Red Bull found Red Bull Media House – a studio who has its own magazine, TV station, Website, record companies and even film production companies. Take the magazine as an example, its content is mostly about stories of sports from normal people instead of products from Red Bull to attract readers. And till today, more than 2 million of “Red Bulletin” have been published. But apart from the success in magazine, Red Bull also experienced failure in other areas of content marketing.

In 2019, Red Bull decided to shut down Red Bull Music Academy. This special music “school” was once very popular and praised by musicians. The hottest video in the Youtube has been played for nearly 1 million times. The reason for the closure of Music Academy is that Red Bull can’t afford the high costs to support the show. And they can’t find a good way to earn enough revenues like they did in magazines.

And just like the words from Matthew Herbert, “the brand is always louder than the art”. Music can energize people like red bull beverages. Although Red Bull tried to play down its participation, the styles of music and caffeinated beverages didn’t match well, which make some audience regard it as “ a music show to sell Red Bull”. So, in this example, Red Bull has to bear the loss from Music Academy and incompatibility of this marketing communication.

Content marketing requires a long-term investment, which could even lead to bankruptcy. In 2005, famous video games producer SQUARE invested lots of money to making a CG movie for promoting their newest video game《FF7》. But in the end, the box-office value is very low, which incurs a huge financial lost to SQUARE. The broad of directors even considered selling the company to Sony to deal with bankruptcy situation.