Runner Staff

As CSU Bakersfield students filled the campus on Sept. 14 for the first day of the fall quarter, they encountered a crate filled with more than 800 multi-flavored cans of Red Bull energy drinks.

Students walking by could easily see the crate, which was located near the east wing of Dorothy Donahoe Hall.

The crate had the appearance that it was airdropped by a Red Bull helicopter according to social media posts by a person working for Red Bull.

However, it was dropped off and set up at 5 a.m. on Monday by the anonymous person.

“This is just the beginning,” said the person, who chose to stay anonymous because of Red Bull policies. “There will be more cool things coming student’s way throughout the school year.”

The anonymous source confirmed that they are a student and the company hires students who already attend the universities to pull off stunts such as these. These marketing stunts are referred to as guerilla marketing.

Guerilla marketing is an advertising strategy that businesses use to promote their products or services by grabbing the public’s attention in an extraordinary way.

According to CSUB’s Director of Procurement and Contract Services Michael Chavez, because Coca-Cola has a contract with the university, Coca-Cola has exclusive rights to all beverages sold, distributed, or sampled (that is distributed at no cost), advertised or promoted anywhere on campus. Chavez stated in an email that from the agreement, “no competitive products can be sold, distributed, sampled, advertised or promoted anywhere [or] any time on Campus.”

Throughout the morning, students helped themselves to the free energy drinks with many filling their backpacks. Meanwhile, other students would glance at the drinks and walk way.

“I love it,” said Ariana Abarca, who is a student that took two trips to her car to unload her bag full of energy drinks. “There’s never been anything like this on campus.”

It wasn’t until Director of Student Union EJ Callahan received an email that there was a crate full of Red Bull cans outside and around 9:30 a.m., facilities came to confiscate the remaining drinks.

Callahan said that he thinks there were about 300 cans still in the crate.

“Facilities came in and picked it up, and I assume they discarded it,” Callahan said.

He added that Coca-Cola had representatives on campus and they just asked them to remove it.

“Campus police and facilities are trying to find out [how to prevent this from happening again] and find a way to take care of it,” he said.

This has not been the first time that Red Bull has done an airdrop at a university.

According to their airdrop related website, Red Bull has delivered crates full of their energy drinks to “over 500 campuses in 55 countries and 6 continents.”

In this case, dropping and setting up a case full of Red bull energy drinks on CSUB’s campus was one way to make their first day of a new school year memorable.