Red Bull Gives You Wings

This is an advertisement by Red Bull promoting their popular slogan “Red Bull Gives You Wings”. The commercial shows a series of clips in which people are participating in extreme sports and appear to be pushing boundaries. The finishing tagline, “the only limit, is the one you set yourself”, highlights the notion of breaking boundaries and implies that Red Bull facilitates the activities that are seen in the advert that some may deem impossible to do, by giving them wings so to speak.

This advert utilisies the “Extreme Situation Template” described by Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon (1999), by inducing the feeling that the activities represented are impossible/unrealistic to the audience, and therefore that it is Red Bull that has enabled those in the advert to participate in such extreme activities. In doing so it enhances the prominence of Red Bull as an energy giving product.

In particular, the final clip of an astronaut skydiving from space out of a helium filled balloon, uses the “extreme attribute” version of this template (Goldenberg et al, 1999), as it exaggerates the effectiveness of Red Bull implying that something literally out of this world can be achieved by consuming this product.

References:

Goldenberg, J., Mazursky, D., & Solomon, S. (1999). The fundamental templates of quality ads. Marketing Science, 18(3), 333-351.