When I saw the Red Bull ad based on the legend of Sisyphus for the first time, I sat up. Wow, this is cutting edge thinking by the ad maker, I said to myself. A little Internet-based research told me it was not
entirely indigenous.
The ad first featured in America some seven or eight years back, and has many variations, all punning on the rock that Sisyphus, the cursed archetype of futility from Greek legend, had to perpetually push up a hill, only to see it roll back the moment he was in sight of the top.
The Sisyphus legend would probably have remained an antiquated myth had not Albert Camus, the French existentialist thinker, written his famous Le Mythe de Sisyphe, which was translated to English for the first time in 1955 (as The Myth of Sisyphus). In it, Camus defined his philosophy of the absurd, with the Sisyphus myth as the archetype for the human condition. Sisyphus was cursed to push a rock perpetually up a hill, returning to the bottom every time the rock rolled back just short of its goal.
The senselessness of the endeavour, along with the hope that the next attempt might bear fruit, marked the human condition. There was hope, or why else would Sisyphus begin his task unfailingly every time; but there was also the knowledge that the hope would never be realised.
In the Red Bull ad, which features a cartoon strip in plain line drawing, Sisyphus is seen struggling up the hill. Suddenly a muse with a floral wreath around her crown wafts into the frame. “Sisyphus,” she coos, “Can’t get it up?” The sexual pun is obvious. But the pun is also somewhat
existential, since it presumes the sterility of the human condition.
Expectations always outstrip ability, the ad seems to suggest. As soon as Sisyphus swigs a can of Red Bull, he seems to take wing. As he flies off, the muse asks, sweetly, “Feeling lighter?”
The release from the perpetual bind of the morbid myth is a clever strategy by Red Bull. If Sisyphus can escape his condition, then anything is possible. That is the promise the ad cleverly suggests.
In another variation of the ad, the puns are less loaded. Even as the same frame plays out the muse asks, “Sisyphus. Have you hit rock bottom?”
The insinuation is brilliant in the sense that the image cleverly mirrors the existentialist view of the human condition, which is grim and unyielding in its desire to expose the sham that it believed the world and society represented.
When Sisyphus slugs his can of Red Bulls and flies off, she suggests, “Feeling bolder?” The pun here is funny, but the hint at the boulder Sisyphus is now released from, also posits a serious counterpoint: that Sisyphus, having imbibed Red Bull, is ready to face life with a greater sense of challenge and confidence.
According to Camus, Sisyphus represents humanity. Having accepted the premise, Red Bull goes on to prove how the legend, trapped as it is in time, is undone by the power of the energy drink that everyone knows, but no one’s quite sure of! If Red Bull can rescue Sisyphus, it can rescue anyone from the depths of boredom and dysfunctionality, these ads assert.
I have seldom encountered such intellectually invigorating advertising.