Red Bull is enlisting mobile and social advertising to launch three new energy drink flavors.

The campaign is being used to promote the nationwide roll-out of new cranberry, lime and blueberry flavors of the energy drink brand?s new Red Bull Editions products. Red Bull has continuously turned to mobile and social in the past to connect with its demographic of consumers.

"By creating a specific branded radio station on Pandora, RedBull is accomplishing two major things ? extending their brand and new product information to the Pandora user base, and associating their products with a specific type of music that is geared specifically toward a target demographic," said Tim Canada, senior account manager at SiteMinis, Atlanta.
 
"I believe that this is a great avenue for brands like RedBull to go down," he said.
 
"Pandora has a huge user base and utilizing Red Bull-branded ads that lead to interactive Red Bull mobile sites for consumers to learn about and ultimately choose which flavor they want the most, is a good mobile practice and experience."

Mr. Canada is not affiliated with Red Bull. He commented based on his expertise on the subject.

Red Bull did not respond to press enquiries.

Mobile gulp
Red Bull is running full-page and expandable mobile ads inside the Pandora iPhone application.

The full-page ads let users pick their favorite between three cans of Red Bull, each of which is associated with a different new flavor. When users click on a can, a flavor-specific branded Pandora radio station is launched.

Each branded radio station is running expandable mobile ads that promote the flavor. For example, if users select the blue radio station, the creative for the ad reads, ?The taste of blueberry.?

When clicked on, consumers are directed to the campaign?s microsite - http://editions.redbullusa.com/.

Via the site, consumers can learn about all three Red Bull flavors.

Social media also plays a big role in how Red Bull is marketing its new drinks. Each drink is linked with a specific hashtag.

Via the site, consumers are able to click on each can to see what others are saying about the flavor.

Additionally, consumers can share content via Twitter, Facebook and Google +.

Bullish on mocial
This is not the first mobile advertising campaign from Red Bull that marries mobile and social.

For example, in January Red Bull launched an advertising campaign that was targeted towards outdoors enthusiasts. The campaign used mobile and social efforts to bolster YouTube views (see story).

Additionally, the brand ran a summer promotion last year within Spotify?s iPhone app that encouraged consumers to upload photos that represented their favorite summer activities that could be shared via social. Once a photo was uploaded, consumers could unlock a coupon that could be used at Duane Reade or Walgreens for a four-pack of Red Bull products (see story).

In this case, Red Bull is using mobile advertising as a catalyst to get consumers talking about the brand?s new products on social media.

Mobile and social complement each other, and when marketers tie the two together, marketing can be more effective.

"Mobile can be a great avenue to promote new product launches," Mr. Canada said.

"Everyone is on the go and always on their phone, and specifically for companies like RedBull, promotion through mobile is critical," he said.  

"When it comes to promoting through mobile, there are a ton of different ways a brand can push out their content, but in the end the content is what is most important. It will be essential for any brand to make sure they have a well-designed, easy-to-use mobile page, with a clear call-to-action that the users will arrive at."

Final Take
Lauren Johnson is associate reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York