Red Bull’s Culture Team has maintained an annual, multi-million dollar investment in Red Bull Music Festival New York: a monthlong, multi-venue music event series. The Festival – comprised of warehouse raves, commissions in contemporary composition, concerts from hip hop legacy acts, and performances from celebrated musicians at the cutting edges of their respective genres – boasted eclectic, niche programming that was decidedly atypical from the traditional notion of a “music festival.”

Despite a business-wide focus to increase relevance with Gen Z, Red Bull had never developed a strategy to market this huge investment in music directly to that college-aged, music-obsessed audience. Additionally, the brand’s efforts to support local music scenes had never included a focus to uplift the artists and organizers who were full time college students, but were launching their own careers in the DIY, underground music scene as a side-hustle.

Red Bull’s product marketing strategy (which typically focused on corporate, white-collar workers and students who study in a traditional context) was also not inclusive to collegiate creatives in the music scene, who’s realities of “working” and “studying” looked much different from the target consumers that Student Ambassadors had been trained to reach.

I developed a cross-departmental strategy for Red Bull to empower the next generation of musical artists, promoters, and Opinion Leaders in New York City.

In doing so, I also created seamless inroads for the brand to expand the relevance of its robust music programming to this audience, and tailored the product marketing strategy to reach this specific, yet valuable demographic of students.