Analyzing Red Bull's Marketing Crisis: Health Hazards and Management

This report examines potential crises facing Red Bull, particularly focusing on health hazards associated with its energy drinks and the resulting impact on the company's reputation. It identifies key issues such as consumer deaths, poor internal communication regarding safety, and concerns about mental health issues and substance abuse among children due to high caffeine levels. The report emphasizes the importance of effective crisis management, including analyzing product quality, addressing FDA warnings, and modifying marketing strategies to reassure parents about product safety. The aim is to help Red Bull mitigate potential damage to its brand reputation and maintain consumer trust. Desklib provides access to this and many other solved assignments for students.

Running head: MARKETING
Marketing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1MARKETING
a) The energy drinks crisis in the Red Bull has been noted as one of the disasters in the
history of the organization. The first crisis that has occurred in the case of Red Bull is that
of the death of few people after drinking thee Red Bull energy drinks (Redbull.com
2019). A 33 year old man from Brooklyn collapsed to death while playing basketball.
The second probable crisis in this scenario is the poor communication between the
different divisions of the company. The safety communication has not been focused in
this section properly. The health hazards caused to the consumers have been very much
problematic for the Red Bull to deal with. The lawsuits have been filed by U.S. Food and
Drug Administration (FDA). The third crisis regarding Red Bull energy drinks is that of
mental health issues and substance abuse among the children. The children will not be
able to handle the level of caffeine and it may damage their health (Booth 2015).
b) These crises are probable since the consumers have complained and filed lawsuits against
the company regarding the health issues. The reputation of the company might be
hampered due these health hazards. The medical concerns will really affect their
reputation in large ways. If the children are affected by their products they might lose
several consumers in this food and beverage industry (Booth 2015). The example can be
given that strawberry sabotage crisis had impacted negatively on the customer base of
Woolworths in several ways since the customers had been affected largely due to the
products. They had to remove the sewing needles from all of their stores. The customers
can go against the organization Red Bull and the company would be losing out of its
customer base. They would run out of their profits as well. The communication between
the staff members of the team should be improved as well.

2MARKETING
c) The selected probable crisis is the health hazards on children. The priority of the parents
always lies in the safety of the children at any cost. The excessive addiction to caffeine
can be caused by the products manufactured by Red Bull. The children can get addicted
to the use of drugs, cigarettes and alcohol (Booth 2015). This will pretty surely damage
the health of the children. This is why it has been spotted as a crisis for the organization.
If the parents begin to complain regarding this, Red Bull will surely be asked for
explanation by the court. The increase of the blood pressure and cardiac arrest can also be
caused by the products of Red Bull. The FDA has been very active in sending warning
letters to Red Bull because many complaints had been filed against their quality of their
products. Thus the negative impacts have been recorded on their brand reputation lately
(Drennan, McConnell and Stark 2014).
d) The effective crisis management will be much needed to control the issue by Red Bull. It
is because the organization will have to come out of this stage since they cannot afford to
lose their customer base. They must look to analyze the quality of their products before
sending them to market (Drennan, McConnell and Stark 2014). The warning letters
should be considered very seriously by the organization and they will have to test the
samples properly. If they find any issues within the samples they should sent it to the
laboratory for refinement. It can be proposed that Red Bull should stop producing those
products for a while that affect the children (Crandall, Parnell and Spillan 2013). The
marketing of the products should be done in a way that the percentage of the materials
used should be written in the packages of the products. This will be an effective way to
convince the parents.

3MARKETING
References and Bibliography
Booth, S.A., 2015. Crisis management strategy: Competition and change in modern enterprises.
Routledge.
Coombs, W.T., 2014. Ongoing crisis communication: Planning, managing, and responding.
Sage Publications.
Crandall, W.R., Parnell, J.A. and Spillan, J.E., 2013. Crisis management: Leading in the new
strategy landscape. Sage Publications.
Drennan, L.T., McConnell, A. and Stark, A., 2014. Risk and crisis management in the public
sector. Routledge.
Redbull.com (2019). Red Bull Gives You Wings - RedBull.com. [online] Red Bull. Available at:
https://www.redbull.com/in-en/ [Accessed 16 Jan. 2019].
Sellnow, T.L. and Seeger, M.W., 2013. Theorizing crisis communication (Vol. 4). John Wiley &
Sons.