Ex-Red Bull marketers launch Audience Labs agency

Former Red Bull marketers Kelly Burgett and Alex Drymonakos have launched sport marketing agency Audience Labs.

The company aims to assist athletes, rights holders, and brands with services including content strategy, media monitoring and media sponsorship valuation, audience research, projections and brand consulting. It is already working with the UCI, FA, World Freestyle Football Association, and Red Bull, and is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.

Burgett and Drymonakos previously worked together at Red Bull headquarters in Austria, Burgett in the global audience insights department and Drymonakos in sport marketing.

In addition to the founders, Audience Labs launches with Sharon Fuller as its chair of the advisory board. Fuller has worked at Red Bull Media House and BBC Sport, and will be joining the NBA in February as head of content and social for EMEA.

Drymonakos said: “We are excited to launch Audience Labs and bring our expertise to the sports industry. We believe in insights-driven decision making. Our audience research, industry expertise and media monitoring solutions all come together to drive our clients’ businesses forward.

“There is a tendency for brands to focus their efforts on tracking and evaluating what’s happening within their own four walls, but a lack of attention is given to analyzing and benchmarking the industry, platforms, or competitors. When evaluating the ROI of certain partnerships, projects or athletes, it becomes extremely difficult to make the right decision if you’re only looking at a piece of the puzzle.”

Burgett added: “We have a strong team in place and have developed innovative sports-tech internally alongside other technology partners to conduct robust media research and deliver the most tailored insights to our clients.

“We were always analyzing and discussing marketing strategies within the sports industry. We would get into all the details of proper campaign activations, omni-channel marketing strategies, and brand positioning. At some point we said, ‘Why don’t we do this? Let’s build a business to support these brands.”

He continued: “We’ve found through working with multiple clients that they don’t need a fancy dashboard, a full team of analysts, or a data engineering team. They need insights-on-demand, they need expert consulting, and they need it in a cost-effective manner. We’ve solved for that.”