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2. Table of ContentsCompany Overviews……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….3
Red Bull…………………………………………………………………………………………………..................3
Monster………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4
Sentiment Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...5
Red Bull………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….5
Monster…………………………………………………………………………………………………..................6
Twitter…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………................…..7
Red Bull………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7
Monster…………………………………………………………………………………………………..............….8
YouTube………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………....9
Red Bull…………………………………………………………………………………………………..................9
Monster…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………10
Facebook………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..11
Red Bull………………………………………………………………………………………………....................11
Monster…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………12
Instagram……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13
Red Bull ……………………………………………………………………………………………....................13
Monster…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………14
Final Thoughts……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….15
Red Bull…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………15
Monster…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………16
Who Did it Better?........................................................................................................................17
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3. Company Overview: Red Bull
The story of Red Bull starts in the 1980’s with their founder,
Dietrich Mateschitz. Dietrich founded the company in Austria and
moved it world wide. Red Bull has come a long way since their start in
the 1980’s increasing their product to become available in 167 Countries.
According to statistics, 50 Billion cans have been consumed and this
company employs 10,410 people.
Red Bull is known for event sponsorships. They associate
themselves with what most people consider to be extreme sports. So it
only makes sense that they sponsor a wide array of extreme athletes and
the events they participate in. Red Bull sponsors events in motocross,
mountain biking, surfing, and snowboarding A new sponsorship that
Red Bull has become apart of, that is a wise Marketing strategy, is to
sponsor big music events and artists. Red Bull sponsors events like
Coachella, Bonaroo, Lollopalooza ,and artists that fall under these music
categories like AWOLNATION, Beartooth, Blitz Kids, Itch, and Five
Knives. Red Bull helps promote new song releases and offer special
behind the scenes type footage that is available to their fans.
Red Bull also invents its own sports like Flugtag, where
competitors build homemade flying machines and see how far they will
fly after being pushed off a cliff. Red Bull is viewed as the market leader
in the Energy drink category, so they go into this battle as the favorite. 3

4. Company Overview: Monster
Monster is the number two company in the energy drink
market. Like Red Bull, they pride themselves on helping to bring
some additional extremeness to the already exciting world of
extreme sports. Monster also sponsors athletes and the events that
they participate in. Some of the events that are powered by
Monster Energy are Monster Energy Super cross, Winter X-
Games, and Dakar (which is a rally sports event).
Unlike its counterpart, Monster has a different
philosophy when they sponsor musicians. Red Bull targets “hip”
EDM musicians, while Monster takes a slightly more edgier Hard
Rock approach. Some concerts that are powered by Monster are
Rock the Range, Fort Rock, and Carolina Rebellion. These concerts
feature musicians like Slipknot, Godsmack, and Crown the
Empire.
In recent years, Monster has come under fire fighting
litigation that claimed that their drink was unsafe and contributed
to deaths of children across the United States. This type of negative
press has hurt Monster’s reputation making them fight pretty hard
to obtain their market share.
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5. Sentiment Analysis: Red Bull
Red bull delivers in the areas of strength,
sentiment, and reach. With strong numbers in
these categories it is clear that Red Bull is being
talked about on social media platforms. They have
also has extended their reach through their
marketing efforts. However, where Red Bull lacks
is in the area of passion. This means that Red Bull
should focus on getting consumers to repeatedly
talk about them on different platforms rather than
just posting content and focusing on likes and
comments. They should aim to create fans who
are loyal and love talking about their brand, not
loyal fans who don’t talk about the brand.
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6. Sentiment Analysis: Monster
From the numbers it’s clear that Monster is the
underdog in this social media competition. With low
strength and reach Monster can do a much better job
at giving consumers something to talk about as far as
engaging content. However, one area that that
Monster does better than Red Bull is that they deliver
on the passion metric. Over my time observing these
Social Mention numbers, Monster has consistently
held above 30% in the passion category. It’s clear that
Monster fans are loyal and like to let everyone know
their preferred source of energy drink. Monster needs
to do a better job at extending their reach, that is
getting more people interested in their brand. The
best way that Monster can accomplish this is to tap
into their loyal fan base and sponsor influencers to
help talk about why they love Monster.
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7. Red bull uses Twitter to let followers know about events
that they are sponsoring, promote new artists song releases, and
also are able to drive campaigns through the platform. A campaign
that Red Bull is currently running is their Airdrop campaign.
Where on a select date a helicopter will deliver care packages of the
product to different locations all over the country based on
audience engagement. Red Bull shows us a creative way to build
engagement with their Airdrop campaign.
They also use Twitter to drive audiences to their other
platforms like Vine. Red Bull posts photo’s of the week with a link
back to their official website. Even though their product isn’t
featured very often , when they do feature the product it is often a
post that is very relevant, like the eclipse. This is a great use of
content, they aren’t overloading the fan with sales pitches, they
just show what they are about.
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8. Monster features their product in a lot
of their Twitter posts. In addition it’s clear that
Monster is trying to gain the upper hand in this
battle by featuring their revealing sales girls in
their posts. The conversation on Monster’s twitter
page focuses around their product first, athletes
second, and events and sponsorships lastly.
Monster has also created
#MonsterGirlMonday which is a great way to
build reach and engagement by allowing followers
to post content of their own. Unlike its
counterpart, Monster can capitalize on Twitter by
using it to post blurbs about what they are doing
on other platforms, or to drive traffic back to their
website. Lastly, Monster is expanding its brand to
a new market by frequently retweeting it’s
Monster Gaming page (a page where Monster
sponsors gamers). Which is very relevant because
their product can help the gamer focus and be at
the top of their game.
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9. YouTube
Red Bull uses YouTube to deliver frequency. On
average, they post 3 to 4 times a day. YouTube is where these
energy drink companies thrive because they are able to
connect their brand with the “living on the edge mentality”
that extreme sports offer. Red Bull posts videos about their
athletes across many different sports and offer behind the
scenes features of their athletes’ daily lives .
They incorporate different series of Webisodes
that feature glimpses into their athletes lives. These
Webisodes center on travel and sports and are a great way to
showcase their extreme athletes in extreme (or just
beautiful) locations. Red Bull has about 7 of these
Webisodes that are updated about once a month. Red Bull
keeps their YouTube page fun and exciting throughout the
whole platform.
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10. YouTube
On YouTube, Monster takes their #MonsterGirlMonday to a
whole new level. Most Mondays followers can expect a new video that
features the whole team of Monster Girls or just a spotlight on one. These
videos are so sex driven that they but even the best of Hardees’
commercials to shame. This theme continues with special behind the
scenes videos with the girls and even showcase their talent in various
competitions like volleyball. In addition to these wonderful girls,
followers can also find videos that feature their event sponsorship,
athlete behind the scenes and they even offer series of Webisodes that
are similar to what Red Bull does.
Its beyond apparent that Monster needs a lot more
engagement on this platform. With about 3.5 Million less subscribers
than Red Bull, its clear that Monster needs some more power to fuel this
platform. It’s overwhelmingly obvious that the videos that feature action
get the most views (yes, even more then their girls). Monster should
work on combing their extreme sports mentality with these beautiful
women, making an unbeatable combination of beauty and power that
their target market can’t resist. Lastly, their cover photo doesn’t really say
anything about the brand. A simple change from the bleak, black
background to something more energy driven would be a wise decision. 10

11. Facebook
Red Bull uses Facebook to post short clips
of their athletes riding, events that they sponsor,
and also for blog posts that link back to their main
webpage. Compared to their Twitter page, they post
far less frequently here. However, on Facebook less
is alright as long as they deliver quality. Red Bull
isn’t fully optimizing the connections that they
make with this platform. Their videos don’t get a lot
of comments or likes compared to the amount of
views they receive. This means that Red Bull needs
to post content that engages their Facebook
community.
Part of Red Bulls problem as far as
engagement is that most of their content is meant
to be clicked through to get to their other pages.
This means that readers might not remember to
take the time to comment or even like if the content
isn’t on the host platform. This is a simple fix that
can be solved by having more open ended content.
Maybe they can cut a video short and ask what
people think will happen at the end.
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12. Facebook
Monster definitely does the quantity part of
posting on Facebook better than their competition.
They post at pretty strategic times like around lunch
time, after dinner, and 11 pm to 12 am when consumers
are rummaging through their social platforms to find
something interesting. Monster adds variety to their
content by mixing pictures of events with links back to
their website for full stories and video clips of their
athletes.
A big difference in the two competitor’s
Facebook pages lie within how they are labeled. Red Bull
labels itself under the Food/Beverage category while
Monster labels itself under the Active Life category.
Unlike its Twitter, Monsters’ Facebook isn’t very product
centric (all because they don’t want it to be). Monster
does a better job at creating engagement with its
content, something that Red Bull can learn from.
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13. Instagram
Typical to their style on other social
media platforms, Red Bull places the emphasis on
pictures and videos of extreme sports. Unlike their
other platforms, Red Bull is able to get a lot of
likes for their content with an average of about 60
K per picture or video. This shows that Red Bull
that their Instagram page is one of the primary
platforms that their audience chooses to engage
with the brand on. Lastly, I was drawn to their
cover photo. Which provides a great way to sum
up their brand without any words. This is a great
opportunity for this brand to keep followers
updated on what’s new without using any words.
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14. Instagram
The content on Monster’s Instagram page
follows a very similar story as their other platforms,
focusing on a good mix of sex, sports and their product.
Monster has taken advantage of using its sex appeal by
creating #MonsterGirlMonday. Hashtags are a great way
to extend a companies reach and engagement because it
gives their followers the opportunity to post content of
their own that may fall in line with the same category.
Interestingly enough, Red Bull and Monster’s
cover pictures look surprisingly similar even down to the
point of with section has revolving pictures and which
sections don’t. However similar these pages may look
Monster doesn’t get as many likes as their competition,
averaging out at 35 K likes per picture. Monster needs to
increase its reach on this vital platform because having
about a million less followers than Red Bull isn’t helping
them out. A great way to do this would be to feature
contests, and maybe even team up with GoPro and have
people vote for their favorite picture that shows their fans14

15. Overall Analysis: Red Bull
As the leader in the energy drink market, it’s clear that their
approach to social media is to show off the personality of their brand, rather
than their product. This was a trend that I saw across all their platforms; there
was very little content about their product. This is a great strategy for this
market leader: to keep engagement up and continue to remind people why they
love this brand.
Across all platforms except for Twitter it’s clear to see that people
prefer this brand as opposed to Monster - sometimes having up to a million
more followers. The platform where Red Bull is the weakest is Facebook. It
seems like Red Bull doesn’t place that much importance on this platform. They
mostly use it as a way to get click- throughs by way of blog articles that link to
their website. With close to 20 Million more followers on Facebook (than
Monster) this is a huge opportunity for engagement that this company isn’t
capitalizing on. A good way to capitalize on this huge amount of followers
(more than on any other of their platforms) would be to show them some love.
By this I mean, they can capitalize on people’s love for the brand by connecting
people with their various sponsorships . A ticket giveaway for their events, or
even by having a way for fans to follow teams that build soapbox cars and flying
machines that participate in their infamous Soapbox and Flugtag events would
increase engagement. This would be a great way for Red Bull to use their
influencers to remind consumers why they love the brand. 15

16. Overall Analysis: Monster
As second in the industry, Monster does not have an easy job to keep up with
their behemoth of a competitor. Some good moves that Monster has done with their
social media is to use the sex appeal of their Monster girls to showcase their product. Red
Bull also has their own version of these girls, but they are rarely showcased the way that
Monster does.
On YouTube, Monster needs to find a way to differentiate it’s content from Red
Bull. Since Red Bull is the industry leader, the public is going to view them as first in
everything including creating content. When your content mirrors the prototype of the
market, you are not going to be viewed as innovative – that is just a simple fact. To
differentiate themselves, Monster could come up with a new event that showcases the
extremeness of the brand through some sort of extreme sport triathlon that can include
bmx, skating, and parkour (just an example).
A place where Monster surpassed their competition was on Facebook. Monster
creates content that is a bit more engaging than Red Bull’s click-through strategy. In the
end, being second is a tough place to be in especially in the world of social where what
you post has the power to create loyalty, and people are going to flock to the leader.
Monster needs to capitalize on their second place position, because people love
underdogs. A great way to do this would be to focus their attention on their athletes. If
Monster athletes are consistently beating the competition, people will start to rethink
their loyalty. It’s clear that Monster’s fans are more loyal than their competition. They
should offer more insight into the company and how hard their athletes work. 16

17. Who did it better?
As previously stated, Red Bull has the
market on their side. This advantage makes their
social media strategy a lot easier from the top of the
podium. Red Bull also has a better general overall feel
for each of the platforms. They post interesting and
engaging content on all their channels and specialize
on getting click-throughs that lead to their other
social media sites or back to the webpage. This is
something that Monster can learn from. When you
make it easier for the people consuming your media
to jump around from page to page when browsing,
the engagement is a lot better realized.
However, Monster has put up a good fight.
They don’t have the number one spot in the market
on their side, so they need to work a lot on
differentiating themselves from Red Bull. They have
this semi-figured out with the overwhelming support
of their spokes girls, but they can further capitalize on
this by having beautiful women that can ride a dirt
bike or surf on their side. This will also help them tap
into the women’s market by having strong female role
models that fans can look up to. 17