Blog / Marketing, startups & tech

RedBull & Real Business giving our business wings

At Concept Cupboard we were lucky enough to be named as one of the UK’s Future 50 companies by RedBull & Real Business. What does that mean? Well in their own words it means we are one of the most creative, stylish, visionary and disruptive brands in the UK – right now. Quite a statement.

We’ve entered a number of awards since we launched & they have all been fantastic. Some better than others in terms of driving PR and awareness, but as a small business you can’t underestimate how important these accolades are to people stumbling across you for the first time. What set the Future 50 award apart from the rest is that both RedBull & Real Business were 100% focused on what they could do for the winners, rather than the other way around.

So as a Future 50 winner here’s what we were fortunate enough to experience:

The awards evening
Held at the RedBull Studios near London Bridge the winners were invited to one of three specialist workshops, followed by a networking event & drinks at the RedBull bar (in their reception, of course).

I opted for the brand workshop delivered by RedBull’s Marketing Director – Huib van Bockel. It was a really refreshing overview on marketing to your customers and how you need to ensure that, now more than ever, you try to give more than you take.

After the hour workshop it was time for a brief intro from Nigel Trood (MD of RedBull) & Kate Basset (Editor of Real Business) followed by mingling & drinks.

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RedBull & lots of it
As a perk of becoming a member of the Future 50 we won a month’s supply of RedBull. For those of you who want to know what a month’s supply look like take a look at the picture below. We emptied it before the month was up so the RedBull team kindly came back to fill it up for us.

We also had the chance to recommend 3 x other businesses who would get the same RedBul fridge for a month. We still ave 2 x recommendations to pass on so if you want to win your own stash enter Concept Cupboard’s Twitter competition.
Find out more here.

Inspiration Day
Saving the best for last RedBull & Real Business invited us to the RedBull F1 factory in Milton Keynes. The Inspiration day consisted of:

- An enthralling talk from Christian Horner (RedBull Team Principal & new hero of mine)
- A tour of the working F1 factory
- Changing tyres on an F1 car time challenge
- An Inspirational talk from Jason Gardener (Gold Medal winner in Athens 2004)
- A Q&A session with Martyn Bernard (will be competing in the high jump in London 2012)
- Plus a really interesting talk from RedBull’s Athlete Performance management team

Even though I can’t necessarily take everything I learnt straight back into the office it was an awesome day.

So if you are a small business keep an eye out for the Future 50 awards next year.