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Energy drink giant Red Bull has earmarked up to £750,000 for

new-media projects in its marketing spend for next year, writes Mark

Sweney.

It has increased its new-media spend for next year by around 33 per cent

as it aims to ramp up its activity and presence in the competitive power

drinks market.

Creative agency Less Rain has also been commissioned as its new-media

agency of choice for all of its online work in the UK over the next 12

months. The agency is to develop a suite of up to 10 web sites primarily

to support the wide range of mainly sports events the company

sponsors.

"In the UK we do lots of events and we create web sites to support

them," said Anoushka Hartop, product manager at Red Bull. "Less Rain has

done a great job for us and it always produces unique and innovative web

sites. New media is very important for Red Bull and fits well with our

brand activity."

Most of Red Bull's online projects this year centred on offline

events.

Next year it will include projects and web sites not directly

event-related.

Less Rain has been working with Red Bull since December 2000 and has

produced around six web sites so far this year.

Red Bull's overall marketing budget for the UK next year is around

£15m.