Red Bull and its creator: “The can gives, the can takes” – exciting documentary on RTL
On the first anniversary of Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz's death, RTL is releasing a five-part documentary about his life and his company. The creators manage to tell an exciting story without pandering. The success story of the energy drink Red Bull is impressive. After Coca-Cola and Pepsi, the Austrian… Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz, known for creating the iconic energy drink Red Bull, has died at the age of 67. The company, which was founded by MatesChitz in 1987, has since become the third largest beverage manufacturer in the world. The TV channel RTL is dedicating a documentary to Matechitz and the Red Bull group, which will be available on October 22nd. The documentary details the origins of the company and its success story. It was written by Peter Onneken and Diana Löbl, with the first episode focusing on Mateshitz's personal life. The book also discusses Matesachitz's struggle with jealousy and a love for the sport.
Pubblicato : 2 anni fa di Pierce in Sports Entertainment
The success story of the energy drink Red Bull is impressive. After Coca-Cola and Pepsi, the Austrian company from Fuschl am See has become the third largest beverage manufacturer in the world. The rapid rise is primarily the work of a man who was a marketing genius and who managed to pimp his product into the core of its own world. Around his sticky-sweet soda, he not only created a colorful sponsorship world of top sporting achievements, thrills and fun, but also something real that can be experienced.
The TV channel RTL is now dedicating a detailed documentary to Dietrich Mateschitz and the Red Bull group, which will be available on October 22nd, the first anniversary of the company patriarch’s death. In five episodes, authors Peter Onneken and Diana Löbl recount the origins of the Red Bull phenomenon. The result is a work that skilfully and entertainingly illuminates a piece of economic history with all its contradictions. The lurid documentary title “Excited – the crazy world of Red Bull” wouldn’t have been necessary because Mateschitz’s life and work is already exciting enough. The title is also a bit misleading, because the world of Red Bull isn’t that crazy. On the contrary: it emerged from cool calculation.
The invention of the famous advertising slogan
We learn right from the start that the Red Bull cosmos was born in 1987. At that time, the advertiser Johannes Kastner was pondering an order from the former sales representative Mateschitz in his Frankfurt advertising agency. He discovered the Thai energy drink Krating Daeng on a trip to Asia, agreed to work with the Thai owner Chaeleo Yoovidhya and founded Red Bull GmbH together in 1984. Mateschitz wanted to bring the energy drink, whose Thai name he simply translated into English, onto the European market. In return, he was willing to give Yoovidhya 51 percent of the shares. He himself held 49 percent. The division between the business partners has not changed to this day.
Mateschitz adjusted the composition of the shower and needed a marketing strategy. And Kastner gave him the slogan that was to provide the core of the advertising campaign: “Red Bull gives you wings.” The documentary recreates the scene in which Kastner sits at his desk at night in the smoke of cigarettes and a whiskey bottle and puts one experiment after another on paper. Mateschitz rejects all suggestions until he is satisfied at some point. But then Kastner has an inspiration and calls Mateschitz in the middle of the night. Sitting on the bed in his pajamas, he answers with two words: “That’s fine,” and hangs up. A creation myth beautifully presented.
The marketing and sales miracle that begins here and the life of its creator is the subject of the first episode. This is interesting because not much is known about Mateschitz. He kept his life strictly hidden from the public and never gave interviews. Private matters remained strictly private.
Nevertheless, there is enough to say about the entrepreneur’s life. So the authors brought the man’s first fiancée in front of the camera. We learn that Mateschitz was apparently pathologically jealous as a young man in the mid-1970s. The woman says she broke up with him after six months because it was almost unbearable. Mateschitz prevented the book from being published. We hear stories of how the gruff Mateschitz later threatened a journalist (“As long as a perforated kneecap costs $500 in Moscow, you won’t be safe”) but apologized. He grew into a man on a mission. He is said to have sometimes run his company like a cult. A saying among employees was: “The can gives it, the can takes it.”
He founded his own TV station, ServusTV, and bought a race track in the Austrian town of Spielberg, in which he invested a total of 500 million euros. Mateschitz donated money to the residents so that they could spruce up their houses and gardens for the many international guests. RTL presenter Florian König calls Spielberg an “Austrian Disneyland for motorsport crazy people”.
When Mateschitz bought the racetrack, he had already come a long way. The son of a single teacher from Styria studied at the business school in Vienna, traveled around the world as a sales representative and eventually became head of marketing for Blendax, the toothpaste company. But that wasn’t enough for him. With Red Bull he wanted to conquer the market in Europe and the USA, and he succeeded.
Red Bull initially became a popular lifestyle drink in Austria and in ski huts. Energy drinks were unknown in Europe at the time. There were rumors that the stimulating effect came from a bull testicle extract. The composition was and is simple. Water with a lot of sugar, a lot of caffeine and taurine, which nobody knew about back then. The German authorities, always suspicious and correct, initially banned the drink in Germany, which Red Bull of course took advantage of. Resourceful bar and club owners from Germany had long since started smuggling the fashionable drink from Austria across the border(!). All of this promoted the rise of the brand. Red Bull became an integral part of the emerging techno and rave scene. Some disparagingly called it “poor man’s cocaine.”
At the same time, Mateschitz recognized the value of sport and his radical concept took off. He initially focused on cyclists and rowers, later on extreme sports, until he got into Formula 1. The founding of the Red Bull racing team gave the drink a boost in sales and Red Bull became a global brand. In 2022 alone, the can was sold 11.6 billion times worldwide. Today, Red Bull still invests a third of its sales in advertising, and a third of that in sports, reports economic expert Sandra Navidi. She is one of many Mateschitz experts who speak in the documentary.
Over the years, Mateschitz created a huge sports and events empire that serves as a gigantic marketing machine. At the same time, Red is not only a sponsor, but also an actor who earns money from the sport. Consequently, the subsequent episodes shed more light on the global network. One is about the tricky creation of the RB Leipzig football club, another is about the spectacular jump from space that the extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner dared to make in 2012. The final episode provides a glimpse of his legacy. Mateschitz left nothing to chance. His son Mark inherited everything but was excluded from running the company. He now reliably supplies material for the boulevard.
Note to readers: The star belongs to the company RTL Deutschland.
Temi: Documentaries