The Facts

• On Red Bull’s growth: Bloomberg reports that despite a 6.4% increase in YoY revenue in 2024, Red Bull experienced the slowest growth since 2020, down from 24% in 2022 to 6.4% in 2024.
• On energy drink market growth: The energy drinks market is experiencing strong and sustained growth, with global revenue projected to rise from around $208 billion in 2024 to over $248 billion by 2029.
• Trends in health consciousness and young people: Younger generations are much more interested in living healthy lifestyles than generations past. 56 percent of Gen Z consumers in the United States say fitness is a “very high priority,” compared with 40 percent of US consumers overall.
  • Energy drink growth is driven by changing lifestyles, expanding product lines, and effective marketing targeting adolescents and young adults, who are the primary consumers, especially males aged 18-34. Innovation in flavor and the introduction of “better-for-you” (BFY) options are contributing to market expansion.
  • Global energy drink trends show sugar-free and reduced-sugar claims dominating new launches, rising demand for functional ingredients (like brain and immune health boosters), and a crowded, highly competitive market where brands must differentiate through health positioning, flavor innovation, and clean/sustainable claims.
• On sugar: Fueled by public health campaigns and media coverage, consumers are more conscious of the links between excess sugar and chronic health issues like obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

Much of the slowdown for Red Bull can be attributed to factors like market saturation, increased competition, mature markets, price sensitivity, and macro headwinds. But the shift to a more health conscious consumer is likely a strong moderator to slowed growth. Red Bull and other beverage companies have limited control over saturation and the maturity of markets. But they have full control over 1) product offerings, 2) how they engage with consumers, and 3) how their brands are perceived moving forward.

Since 2020, search interest in "health risk" has climbed 30 points according to Google Trend data, and searches for "zero sugar" have climbed 55 points over that same period. (Google Trends, 9/24/25)

What’s next for energy drink companies in a health-conscious market?

To meet these new market and consumer demands, mature brands like Red Bull will need to consider how to shift the framing by which people view their products and programs.

Behavioral science research shows that understanding the context within which people interact with a product, service, or program is key to building trust (Lewis, 2022), and building trust is critical to influencing behavior change (Colquitt et al, 2007; Hancock et al, 2023). Research also shows that role models can elicit behavior change or close aspirational gaps in hard to reach populations (Moreira, 2016).

This means that beverage companies looking to align with consumers who place significant value in health and fitness will need to call on athletes, fitness, health, and well-being experts to engage directly with health and well-being communities, to build trust and self-efficacy (Feltz, 2008), closing the psychological distance (Moran et al, 2022) between health-conscious consumers and the brand’s health and fitness philosophy.

What’s working? Red Bull’s Bright Spots

Red Bull’s “Train Like a Pro” series is a strong start. This instructional and inspirational content brings the Red Bull philosophy closer to home. The “Zero Excuses” series reinforces social norms, leans on trusted messengers to empower athletes and followers of the brand.

Community events like the Wings for Life World Run connect athletes of all kinds and ability levels in a fun format, bringing people together to support a socially-compelling mission and aligning the brand with better health and well-being outcomes. Integrations like the partnership with Strava establishes a health and fitness ecosystem that normalizes new behaviors around the Red Bull community — inspiring consumers to not just follow their heroes, but become health and fitness enthusiast themselves.

And Red Bull has long known the influence and engagement power of a great story. Content from top Red Bull athletes showing the process of building a championship season, or even showing their entry point in the sport brings the philosophy closer to the consumer (“hey, Jett Lawrence learned how to ride a bike just like me!”).

Process > Outcomes

Red Bull brand and marketing teams have made great strides to align with an increasingly health-conscious world, but there is opportunity for growth. While competitions and major sports events are fun to watch in person and on screens, most consumers and even day to day athletes don’t enter competitions themselves. Once again, we see this great divide in psychological distance.

In addition to becoming more conscious of health and wellness, young Americans are increasingly becoming more individualistic. And the isolation caused by social media and smartphone use, combined with recent concerns over macroeconomic trends, can make heroes feel increasingly more out of reach. Consumers are increasingly asking themselves: “Cool…But what does this have to do with me?”

Moving forward, beverage brands like Red Bull should evolve strategies from the competition-based outcomes initiatives to social, habitual, and developmental process-based initiatives that are most relevant to the day-to-day consumer. By doing so, Red Bull can close the psychological distance between their health and wellness philosophy and the consumer.

Other ways to accomplish this:

1. Empower people in need: Extend brand beyond performance and into purpose by hosting health and wellness activations in underserved communities—bringing athletes, trainers, and health specialists directly to consumers. These events would focus on nutrition, movement, and resilience, while retaining the energy and excitement of Red Bull’s culture. The experiences could be captured and distributed as a premium digital series, showcasing authentic impact stories and building cultural relevance with new audiences. Examples: Nike’s ‘Made to Play’; Gatorades ‘Fuel Tomorrow’
2. Organize growth communities: Work with bike shops and apparel companies to organize group rides, runs, hikes, and other daily activities that bring like-minded health and wellness consumers together. Example: Rapha’s “Ride with us” program brings the cycling community together by organizing inclusive group rides, establishing physical and virtual community hubs, and creating a globally connected club. The UGC content created and shared from these recurring activities has immense earned media value (EMV).
3. Heroes learn from heroes: People love mashups, heroes inspire people, and watching these heroes struggle to grasp something new is humanizing and empowering. Show that even Red Bull’s star athletes and musicians face steep learning curves in the things we all aspire to do. Mash them up—athletes trying music, musicians trying sport. n
   • In certain contexts, local role models can be even more influential as it closes the aspirational distance. If a role model feels too far from the audience, it can backfire (“that’s not me, I’ll never get there”).
4. Show your work: Continue to emphasize behind the scenes video content showing the work that goes into building success stories, feats, wins, and championships. Example: ‘How to Become a Supercross Champion‘ featuring the Lawrence brothers shows the intense work behind the scenes to build a championship season.

The Big Picture

Red Bull has consistently inspired people through amazing feats and incredible athletes. But heros can feel far away in a world that is dominated by smartphones that leave so many scrolling rather than living the Red Bull philosophy. The future of lifestyle and cultural branding will need to close this psychological gap between the Red Bull philosophy and the end consumer, meeting people where they are, and showing them that they too can fly.

•••

6 concepts from behavioral science that can be applied:

1. Information is not enough to change behavior: People interpret new info through the lens of prior beliefs (confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, etc.).
   • Red Bull has responded with Zero Sugar launches, athlete partnerships, and wellness-adjacent content that slowly reshape perception.
2. Trusted messengers > raw data: Who delivers the information often matters more than the content. A source that feels “in-group” or values-aligned increases openness.
   • BTS content from top Red Bull athletes showing the process of building a championship season, or even showing their entry point in the sport brings the philosophy closer to the consumer — “they’re just like us!”. In certain contexts local role models can be even more influential as it closes the aspirational distance. If a role model feels too far from the audience, it can backfire (“that’s not me, I’ll never get there”).
3. System and context design: Structural changes “scaffold” belief updates. Exposure to counter-attitudinal views in low-threat settings, default pathways that normalize a new behavior, or environments that reduce polarization cues.
   • Sampling at fitness events, sponsoring endurance sports, and positioning Zero Sugar in health-oriented retail channels reduces friction to trying and normalizes the shift to perceiving Red Bull as a health and fitness brand.
4. Small, repeated exposures: Belief revision tends to be gradual: micro-doses of discrepant information, delivered consistently, are more effective than a single confrontation.
   • See the mere exposure effect from Bornstein et al 2022, theory originally published in 1992.
5. Social reinforcement: Beliefs are socially embedded. Change sticks better when new norms are visible, rewarded, and supported by a community rather than positioned as isolated “corrections.”
   • e.g. Seeing someone you admire/respect at your local gym drinking a Red Bull Zero.
6. Narratives: Stories and analogies are more persuasive than statistics; they integrate new ideas into existing mental models without direct contradiction.
   • e.g. For me, it was years ago when I learned via a pro supercross story about the Red Bull health and training facilities that include services from rehabilitation from injury, to Vo2 max testing, to nutrition, to even psychological and neurological training.

Sources

1. Bornstein, R. F., & D’agostino, P. R. (1992). Stimulus recognition and the mere exposure effect. Journal of personality and social psychology, 63(4), 545.
2. Bornstein, R. F., & Craver-Lemley, C. (2022). Mere exposure effect. Cognitive illusions, 241-258.
3. Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., & LePine, J. A. (2007). Trust, trustworthiness, and trust propensity: a meta-analytic test of their unique relationships with risk taking and job performance. Journal of applied psychology, 92(4), 909.
4. DiFrancesco L, Fulgoni VL 3rd, Gaine PC, Scott MO, Ricciuto L. Trends in added sugars intake and sources among U.S. adults using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001-2018. Front Nutr. 2022 Aug 18;9:897952. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2022.897952. PMID: 36061886; PMCID: PMC9434277.
5. Feltz, D. L., Short, S. E., & Sullivan, P. J. (2008). Self-efficacy in sport. Human Kinetics.
6. Hancock, P. A., Kessler, T. T., Kaplan, A. D., Stowers, K., Brill, J. C., Billings, D. R., Schaefer, K. E., & Szalma, J. L. (2023). How and why humans trust: A meta-analysis and elaborated model. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1081086
7. Lewis, A. (2022, October 26). How Leaders Build Trust. Harvard Business Impact. https://www.harvardbusiness.org/insight/good-leadership-it-all-starts-with-trust/
8. Moran, T., Eyal, T. (2022, February 1) Emotion Regulation by Psychological Distance and Level of Abstraction: Two Meta-Analyses—. Retrieved September 24, 2025, from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/10888683211069025
9. Moreira, D. (2016, December 12). How Awards Affect Winners’ and Peers’ Performance in Brazil. https://scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/dianamoreira/files/moreira_jmp.pdf