What makes some brand programs last 20 years, while others barely last 2 years?

In 2020, a livestream from the Dominican Republic quietly became the most-watched global music event of the year. Not Coachella. Not Eurovision. It was the World Finals of Red Bull Batalla, a freestyle rap competition born in Puerto Rico and nurtured into a global cultural phenomenon across Latin America and Spain. 

It had no mega-headliners, no glossy campaign. What it had was community.

For CMOs and brand leaders grappling with how to "break into culture," Red Bull Batalla offers a rare blueprint: community-building that's slow, reciprocal, and earned. This isn’t a story about virality or influencer seeding. It's about cultural integration and what it actually takes for a brand to become a trusted part of the story. 

As Stefan Lukic, long time steward of Red Bull Batalla says:

“Storytelling is when your brand amplifies someone else’s story,” he explains. “Story-being is when your brand is part of the story itself — when the story couldn’t exist without you.”

Showing Up Before The Spotlight

When I first joined Red Bull’s global HQ in 2013, Red Bull Batalla was still a grassroots initiative. Long before the 7.2M YouTube subscribers and packed arenas, the brand was showing up quietly, supporting existing collectives, lending DJ tables and coolers, hiring hosts and photographers from within the scene.

The signal wasn’t: “Look at us.” It was: “We’re here. What do you need?”

Or as Stefan put it:

“You earn your right to be on stage because you’ve been doing a lot of work behind the scenes.”

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While most brands might have been content to slap on a logo and book 10 rappers, Red Bull chose a harder path: building the scaffolding of a movement.

Caring When Nobody Else Cared

In the early 2000s, freestyle rap wasn’t bankable. Labels weren’t investing, sponsors weren’t knocking on doors, and mainstream media wasn’t paying attention.

Red Bull leaned in anyway.

“No one else cared about freestyle in those early years. Labels weren’t investing, sponsors weren’t knocking on doors. But Red Bull built a platform anyway - not to sell more cans, but to grow and enrich talent from every angle. We created spaces to build confidence, to be creative, to test yourself on a professional stage that didn’t exist anywhere else.”

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Red Bull Batalla became (and still is) a proving ground not just for rap, but for life skills.

“Freestyle is the purest muscle of improvisation. To stand in front of a crowd and think in real time - that’s confidence, that’s wit, that’s storytelling. Once you’ve done that, it changes how you walk through the world.”

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This investment wasn’t transactional. It was stewardship. And it built a depth of trust that no campaign could buy.

Building Platforms, Not Campaigns

Over two decades, Red Bull invested in the entire ecosystem:

• Workshops and training platforms
• A dedicated app for practice and connection
• Local stages across dozens of countries
• Digital content that amplified voices far beyond local scenes
• Professional stages that legitimized freestyle as a cultural art form
• Mentorship and exposure that gave artists careers, not just trophies
  
  

“Campaigns are shortcuts. Easy to buy an artist, put them in your ad, and call it a day. But ecosystems are about twenty years of investment — apps, workshops, training grounds, stages. That’s what compounds.”

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Red Bull Batalla wasn’t about renting culture. It was about creating the conditions for culture to thrive.

The Arkano Experiment

If Batalla shows how Red Bull built a community, Red Bull Champion Arkano shows how story-being works at the level of a single artist. In 2016, Spanish rapper Arkano decided he wanted to attempt something unprecedented: freestyle rap for 24 hours straight. At first, he proposed 12.

“I googled it,” Stefan recalls, “and saw there was already a 24-hour record. Arkano paused and said, ‘Then I’ll do 24.’ Just like that.”

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What followed wasn’t a stunt, it was months of deep collaboration:

• A 12-hour rehearsal run in Red Bull’s office
• Intimate planning of logistics as granular as bathroom breaks
• Emotional safeguards, like Arkano asking not to see his mother until the end so he wouldn’t break focus

“Arkano trusted us completely. He said, ‘You decide the logistics, the cameras, the setup. You’re the experts.’ That level of trust let us build something historic together.”

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The result (at the time): one of Red Bull’s most-watched livestreams, second only to Red Bull Stratos. More importantly, it was a story that couldn’t have existed without both Arkano and Red Bull.

This wasn’t storytelling. It was story-being.

Scaling Without Flattening

Red Bull Batalla eventually expanded across continents, but scale didn’t mean sameness. Each country adapted the format to its own culture:

• Judges remained local.
• Performers reflected each nation’s language and style.
• Rules flexed to account for different skill bases.

“The essence was always improvisation. What changed were the ingredients - the names, the formats, the details that made it resonate locally.”

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This blueprint of coherence without uniformity allowed Red Bull Batalla to grow into one of Red Bull’s most loyal communities worldwide.

Today, the Red Bull Batalla YouTube channel has more than 7.2M subscribers - more than three times Red Bull Racing’s official channel. Subscriber counts aren’t the measure of cultural impact, but they tell us something important: when brands build ecosystems, even a so-called niche can outgrow global powerhouses.‍

Community as the Engine

Red Bull Batalla didn’t treat its audience as consumers. It treated them as co-creators. Judges, DJs, photographers, even designers came from within the scene. Rules were developed with the community, not imposed on it.

“Spectatorship doesn’t build communities. Participation does.”

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That’s why Red Bull Batalla has endured: because fans see themselves in it. Because the brand didn’t just borrow culture, it helped build it.

“The real magic is when people forget about their problems because they’re united in something bigger. That’s the role of entertainment marketing — to create spaces that unite rather than divide.”

Takeaways for Leaders Entering Culture

For CMOs and brand leaders, Red Bull Batalla’s lessons are simple but surgical:

1. Define a Meaningful Why
   Define how it connects back to your product and DNA of your brand. Why that space? Why that playground? Why that culture? 
2. Care Before It's Cool
   Don't wait until a community is commercially attractive. Showing up early creates trust that can't be bought later.
3. Build Platforms, Not Campaigns
   One-off activations fade. Systems that help people grow, connect and showcase their talent last.
4. Elevate Undervalued Skills
   Freestyle isn't just rap. It's confidence, creativity, storytelling. Frame the hidden value of a community's craft.
5. Trust Compounds Into Scale
   Communities grow not because of algorithms, but because people believe you were there when nobody else was.

‍In Short…

To earn a seat on stage, brands must be stewards. Red Bull Batalla isn't solely successful because it markets itself well, (though it does). It's successful because it matters.

It creates space for communities to see themselves, grow, and rise together.

The question isn’t: How do we break into culture?

The better question is: How do we help build it?