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During the height of dotcom mania -- a dimly remembered time of roll-away office cots and 10 PM conference calls -- Red Bull energy drink became the fuel of choice at West Coast kitchenettes, predawn dance parties, and Kozmo.com checkout lines. Three years and one stunning economic downturn later, office fridges are bare of complimentary beverages, and 22-year-old consumers can hardly afford résumé paper much less a caffeinated kick in the pants -- especially one that costs $1.99 for just 8.3 ounces.

So how is Red Bull marketing its brand to meet the changing needs and budgets of its customers? How will the privately owned Austrian company expand its product line beyond the silver-bullet beverage that "gives you wings"?

The short answer: It's not. And, quite frankly, it doesn't need to. Not yet, anyway.

Red's Dawn: The Birth of a Bold Brand

Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz introduced his taurine-fueled beverage to Europe in 1987. (Coincidentally, it was the same year Howard Schultz acquired a small, Seattle-based coffee outfit called Starbucks Corp.) Ten years later, Red Bull charged into the United States, launching a new category of nonsoda energy drinks aimed at burned-out high-school and college students.

Remarkably, America's hottest new brand bucked the trend of aggressive, excessive marketing that swept through upstart companies in the late 1990s. While Pets.com and eToys were lavishing millions on prime-time advertising, Red Bull was quietly converting America's youth into devoted, enthusiastic customers.

Since its inception, Red Bull has shunned print advertising in its marketing strategy. It has not created one Web-marketing campaign. And it hasn't tweaked or expanded its product line one iota. Red Bull has, however, expanded into 50 countries, experienced annual double-digit growth, and captured the loyalty of a notoriously fickle consumer group: teenagers. Today, a dozen imitators like Whoop Ass and Red Devil vie for the number-two high-voltage beverage spot, and Mateschitz is the richest man in Austria.

So what gives? How did Red Bull come to dominate the energy-drink market through stealth and thrift? How did it become the coolest brand since Slim Shady without a branding blowout?

"In terms of attracting new customers and enhancing consumer loyalty, Red Bull has a more effective branding campaign than Coke or Pepsi," says Nancy F. Koehn, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers' Trust from Wedgwood to Dell (Harvard Business School Press, 2001). "Red Bull is building a beverage brand without relying on the essential equipment of a mass-marketing campaign. Perhaps the indispensable tools of marketing aren't so indispensable after all."

Here are some tools that Red Bull doesn't use: billboards, banner ads, taxicab holograms, blimps, Super Bowl spots. Even its TV spots -- all of which feature the whimsical sketches of a mysterious Austrian artist -- serve more to amuse than to educate or entice consumers.