Bull Market

Don't ever underestimate the power of good advertising strategies.

Have you ever been amazed by the success of Red Bull?

In the days where it costs millions of dollars to run a Formula One team; where major car manufacturers are unwilling to continue to take part due to soaring costs; and where a number of teams have folded for not having secured enough advertising money, this sports drink giant manages to run TWO teams at the same time: Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Toro Rosso (meaning "Red Bull" in Italian).

I have never been a fan of extreme sports. Yet whenever they are broadcasted on television, I can guarantee that you will see a handful of gigantic Red Bull banners or balloons at the venue, and at least a couple of the front-running athletes sponsored by Red Bull.

In fact, it is the advertising at the extreme sports scenes which has made Red Bull hugely popular among the young people.

And like the motor-racing drivers, these Red Bull-sponsored extreme sports athletes all wear the same distinctive silver and blue helmet.

And because its major shareholder, Dietrich Mateschitz, an Austrian businessman who once claimed that he came up with the concoction at the bar of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong, is an avid flyer, you will also see lots of Red Bull advertising in flight shows and air racing events.

The success and popularity of the drink have enabled the company to expand into different sporting scenes in the coming years as well, like its foray into NASCAR with car-manufacturing giant Toyota as a major partner.

To find out why it is so popular, I bought a can and tasted it.

But I didn't like it.

Its strange flavour (imagine strawberry-flavoured cough syrup in a can) can only be matched by beer and alcoholic drinks (no, I don't drink them often). It just doesn't taste that natural to me.

Yet it has also given me a remarkable idea.

Why not re-package some of the Chinese traditional herbal teas currently on sale in Hong Kong, and advertise them in the extreme sports venues, just like what Red Bull has been doing so successfully?

If Mateschitz could become a billionaire thanks to this reddish-pink concoction, why couldn't I become the richest man on earth courtesy of the herbal tea?

I'd better start working on the phone now.