Dietrich Mateschitz: Wings for People and Ideas E-Book

Volker Viechtbauer

• Herausgeber: Benevento
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 282

Beschreibung

Creative Drive and Entrepreneurial Spirit Wings for People and Ideas shows us how Viktor Frankl influenced Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull. It combines the history and philosophy of entrepreneurship into a unique and inspiring unity. From the outside, logotherapy and Red Bull seem to have little in common. Yet both worlds are based on the same principles: freedom, self-responsibility, and an unwavering creative drive. Volker Viechtbauer, long-time confidant of Dietrich Mateschitz, shows us how Frankl's humanism aligns with the Red Bull founder's philosophy of life. With this, he not only provides insight into the culture of Red Bull, but also highlights how Frankl laid the foundation for purpose- and talent-oriented entrepreneurship and a modern working world defined by self-responsibility.

Leseprobe

DIETRICH MATESCHITZ:WINGS FOR PEOPLE AND IDEAS

VOLKER VIECHTBAUER

DIETRICH MATESCHITZ: WINGS FOR PEOPLE AND IDEAS

Red Bull and Viktor Frankl’s search for meaning

The penguin story (p. 130/131) was re-narrated and cited by courtesy of Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen from: Glück kommt selten allein, Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbeck bei Hamburg 2009.

Despite making every effort to be accurate and researching carefully, the authors respectively editor and the publisher take no responsibility and accept no liability for the content provided.

1st Printing

© 2023 Benevento Verlag by Benevento Publishing Salzburg – Munich, a brand of Red Bull Media House GmbH, Wals near Salzburg

All rights reserved, in whole or in part, especially the right of public lecture/ recitation, the right to transmit by radio and television, and the translation right. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means – graphic, electronic or mechanical (which includes but is not limited to: photocopying, recording, taping or storing information) – without the written permission of Red Bull Media House GmbH.

Publisher and Owner: Red Bull Media House GmbH

Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15

5071 Wals near Salzburg, Austria

Layout and Typesetting: MEDIA DESIGN: RIZNER.AT

Typeset in Palatino, Futura PT

Cover design: Büro Jorge Schmidt, München

Copyright cover motive: © Hoika Mikhail / shutterstock

ISBN: 978-3-96704-129-3

eISBN: 978-3-71095-161-9

For my Uncle Herbert,who sought freedom with us on so many journeys

“Strictly speaking, the so-called ‘World of Red Bull’ no longer has much to do with the classic term ‘Consumer Marketing’, but is rather a sort of philosophy or worldview. This includes a certain amount of commitment to achieve, a judicious measure of risk, and the joy of bringing something to a successful conclusion as well as the necessary balance with sport, pleasure, music, entertainment, and social acceptance.

Red Bull has a number of success factors to choose from. Consistency, motivation, expertise, and common sense are among them. Or taking pleasure in what you do. Gratitude for success. And perhaps most importantly of all: a positive basic approach to life, work, and achievement.

And in addition, I agree with Viktor Frankl, who describes the right to personal responsibility as the most characteristic of all human rights.”

Dietrich Mateschitz

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

I THE VALUES SYSTEM OF VIKTOR FRANKL AND THE CORPORATE CULTURE OF RED BULL

1 Freedom and personal responsibility

How the foundation for a modern concern was laid in the early years of Red Bull

2 The will to find meaning, or the nature of tasks in life

How Red Bull created a new market without taking itself too seriously …

… And finally conquered the world from its base in Austria

3 Esteem, confidence, and trust

How Red Bull set the parameters for a wealth of ideas and creativity

4 Paradoxical intention

How Red Bull sounds out boundaries and surpasses itself

II HOW TO GIVE COMPANIES WINGS

1 Viktor Frankl as the pioneer of a practiced humanism

From talent to strength to purpose – a personal treasure hunt

2 Martin Seligman, Don Clifton, and the invention of the strength test

How the concern and employees at Red Bull achieve a meaningful approach to working together

Thoughts on the Future of Work – An Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Further Reading by Viktor Frankl

PREFACE

In the spring of 2020, after several months’ work, I presented the first draft of this book to Dietrich Mateschitz to review and approve. I think he had certain reservations about the project from the very beginning: Why should we be publishing this book? What was the purpose of it all? he asked me when we touched briefly on the subject during our conversations.

My answer was that I wanted to use the book to explain the philosophy of Red Bull; that I wanted to provide new employees with a sort of orientation guide. But that I was sure that there was also a wider public that would be interested. So he asked me whether the book would also be available in bookstores. I responded that he should take that decision. “But it’s already written, just publish it,” he said. I insisted that he should read it and give it his approval.

The next reaction came several weeks later. He had started reading the manuscript and it seemed to me that he was satisfied. The manuscript was good, he commented, but a few mistakes had crept in which would need to be corrected. For example, the remark, “Not bad for a beverage company,” in connection with four Formula One World Championship titles, came not from Bernie Ecclestone, but from Lewis Hamilton.* He was not referring to such inaccuracies, however. He thought we would have to meet up once or twice a week for several weeks and go through the whole thing.

More weeks passed before I inquired whether he had formed an opinion about the book yet. Dietrich Mateschitz said he had been pushing the subject to the back of his mind, but that he would tackle it now. Two or three weeks later he requested that I meet him in Thalgauegg, at the corporate headquarters of his private companies, a few kilometers from the concern headquarters in Fuschl am See. The news he had for me was not good. The book could not be published. The general tenor of his message was that Red Bull could not be attributed to one single formula or source—in this case Viktor Frankl. The concern was more multi-faceted than that. If I were to ask his long-standing assistant Sonja Ernstbrunner or CFO Walter Bachinger, they would all have a different view of Red Bull.

There it was again—the subjective perception of Red Bull, which he did not want to deprive any of the employees or consumers of (I shall refer to this in the book). Red Bull should remain a projection surface for the wishes and ambitions of those who had a connection to it.

At the end of our conversation he picked up the manuscript, which he had read in its entirety and had partly corrected (including the Ecclestone faux pas), and gave it to me with the comment: “But don’t throw it away. Put it in the safe. Perhaps it could be a sort of obituary.” And that was the end of the subject for the time being.

I am adding this preface on January 1, 2021, because I had a dream last night. Dietrich Mateschitz and I were sitting with some other people—perhaps employees—at a table, and were discussing a problem. It was evidently also about a contract. I had examined it from a legal point of view with regard to risks and—especially—ways of terminating it and what the consequences would be. What he demanded of me, of all of us sitting at that table, was to think about what was less obvious—about synergies, possibilities, and connections. Because “the sum of all the parts is greater than the whole.”

Postscript: Shortly afterwards, Dietrich Mateschitz became seriously ill. He did not speak of his illness and continued to work. It was only shortly before his death that he gave us his instructions and wishes. On Saturday, October 22, 2022, his assistant Tina Deutner called me in the evening and asked me to send a message to the employees announcing the death of Dietrich Mateschitz. He had written it himself.

* Of course this error has since been corrected.

INTRODUCTION

“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Dietrich Mateschitz founded Red Bull at the end of the 1980s and launched the energy drink of the same name in Austria as the first functional drink outside Asia. The innovative marketing concept of Red Bull is taught today at business schools in Europe and beyond. Energy drinks are top in the global drinks ranking, beside Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and still have double-figure growth rates after more than thirty years, while traditional soft drinks are stagnating.

However, Red Bull is not just a drink; it is also an attitude to life. The brand stands for success, dynamism, innovation, independence, non-conformism, fun, and unpredictability. In contrast to the brand, the Red Bull of Dietrich Mateschitz is characterized by humanist qualities and is managed in line with conservative values. Its activities are determined by professionalism and modesty. And what may not be evident at first sight is that this conduct is based on the principles of Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was the founder of the third and last Viennese School of Psychotherapy, Logotherapy, and Existential Analysis, after Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Frankl was a humanist. People and their specific task in life, their purpose, lay at the heart of his reflections. Individuals must choose this purpose for themselves freely and with personal responsibility, must stand up for it, pursue it unwaveringly, if necessary also against opposition, and with confidence in the possibility of a change in circumstances for the better.

At first glance, logotherapy has little in common with Red Bull. Their ways of thinking seem just too opposed—a search for meaning and existential analysis on the one hand, and fun and lifestyle on the other. And yet both are “phenomena” based on the same principles, which extend beyond their primary intention. They are a worldview, a worldview in fact which focuses above all on freedom, personal responsibility, and an absolute creative will.

Mateschitz attended Frankl’s lectures personally. Frankl’s practical humanism and the search for meaning struck a chord with the way of life of the founder, shareholder, and managing director Dietrich Mateschitz. They represent a practical alternative model to the permanent temptation to deny the (personal) responsibility of the individual.

Like Dietrich Mateschitz and Red Bull, Viktor Frankl also set out from Austria and conquered the world with his philosophy. Although both individuals lived according to comparable principles, Frankl was primarily a psychotherapist and a dogmatist, while Mateschitz on the other hand was an entrepreneur and a pragmatist. It is therefore neither useful nor expedient to compare their personalities. Red Bull owes its success to the creative drive and personality of Dietrich Mateschitz and not to the teachings of Viktor Frankl. On the other hand, Frankl supplied the framework of values within which Red Bull really does “give wings” to employees, athletes, and dissenters of all kinds and persuasions, and has done so every day. Many of those who share this approach love Red Bull for precisely this reason. And whenever those who have been indoctrinated criticize, or even show hostility towards the brand, whichever type of “-ism” they may belong to, it strengthens the belief of Red Bull’s supporters that they are on the right path.

Conformism is the scourge of our time—we do what everybody does. Nor does it require totalitarian systems these days; indoctrination takes place today more subtly than that, in the filter bubbles and echo chambers of social media. The element of truth in an item of information is no longer a criterion, and en passant the achievements of the Enlightenment are abolished once more. The world is flat; humans have never set foot on the moon; and vaccines transmit Aids—today there is no limit to the range of alternative facts.* The dangerous aspect of this development is that a discussion which should be carried out humanistically, is being politicized, although the dangers lie on all sides. From the self-styled 'liberal' wing, depending on one's point of view, there are the threats of predatory capitalism, the pursuit of success, short-term gains, and a random succession of single brief moments of pleasure in consumption, which allow the protagonist only the choice between hedonism and nihilism. From another perspective, doubts are expressed as to whether we are capable, or whether we should even be allowed, to assume responsibility. They want to protect us from ourselves with rules and regulations which seem increasingly Kafkaesque and which are dreamt up in the protected workshops of trade-union ideals. The nanny state wants to protect us, also—and especially—from ourselves, and to gently but firmly regulate and accompany our fate, from cradle to grave. Also, there is the threat of social convention, compromise, and political correctness.

Thus the general identity crisis proceeds existentially in a “humanitarian” way between heteronomy and self-determination. Seduced, mothered, standardized, and calculated, today—as yesterday—it is not a given to swim against the tide, to find one’s specific task in life—and to remain decent in the process. No more and no less.

The experiences in four concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, taught Frankl that there are only two kinds of people: those who are decent and those who are not. Living according to humanist principles means striving to have the courage for intellectual independence and the development of talents, and to know at the end of one’s life, for what one has lived. The why in any case eludes our imagination. Both Frankl’s insights and Red Bull encourage people to do just that—contrary to all social conventions.

May readers be inspired by this encouragement, both in their professional career and their personal life. Frankl’s teachings deserve to serve as guides not only in the world of work but also within the family and society. Moreover, by reading this book, readers will not only gain an insight into the history and culture of Red Bull as a company. They will also experience how corporate history, philosophy, and the bold thoughts and actions of individual personalities combined to create a unique, indeed an inspiring, unit. Because Viktor Frankl should be seen not only as the founder of a school of thought which established the component of meaning as the decisive motivation for human activity, and thereby exerted a decisive influence on Dietrich Mateschitz and/or Red Bull. Equally important, and perhaps crucial for coming generations, is that in doing so he laid the foundation for an economy and management philosophy oriented towards meaning, talent, and strengths. In economic theory, the Viennese School around Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and Friedrich August von Hayek builds on these concepts as well as on the management theory of Peter Drucker. The emphasis on the significance of the individual, and his or her contribution to evolutionary creation, originated in Vienna: it opposes the dominant reductionism of the neoclassical theory of a Chicago School as well as the doctrines of a John Maynard Keynes in economic sciences and the process-oriented, dehumanized management of a Frederick Winslow Taylor.

If you like, here a philosophical battle of strength is taking place, with Viktor Frankl as its principal representative. The struggle is between nothing less than a human versus a dehumanized worldview: humanism versus conformism and nihilism, individualism versus automation and process-orientation, selflessness versus personal fulfillment, entrepreneurial flair versus mathematical models of equilibrium, and ultimately the postulate of a free will against a totalitarian and existentialist determinism. The position of Viktor Frankl is: “The decisive element is always the human being. But what is a human being? The being that always decides. And what does it decide? What it will be in the next moment.”

* The networks (Google, Facebook, etc.) react only hesitantly to criticism of this kind. As technology concerns which merely make platforms available, they do not see themselves as responsible for the content users post. For more detail on this subject, see Zucked: Waking up to the Facebook Catastrophe. The author Roger McNamee was one of the first investors in Facebook and was a supporter of Mark Zuckerberg, but is one of his most outspoken critics today. Dietrich Mateschitz, who was also critical of these developments and of social media, founded “Quo Vadis Veritas,” “Addendum,” and “Pragmaticus” as projects which endeavor to produce truthful reporting.

I

THE VALUES SYSTEM OF VIKTOR FRANKL AND THE CORPORATE CULTURE OF RED BULL

“The aimless individual suffers his fate; the man with an aim shapes his.”

IMMANUEL KANT

Viktor Frankl was a humanist. Humanism is a worldview which respects the dignity of the individual and his or her personality and life. It practices tolerance and champions freedom of conscience and freedom from violence. A humanist ethic affirms life, freedom of choice, and development opportunities. Ideas must be thought of and thought through, but require the unleashing of human strengths in order not to remain figments of the imagination. True adventures do not occur only in the mind, but must become part of real life, must materialize if they are to endure and have significance. Otherwise we shall remain, as Arthur Schopenhauer aptly remarked, merely, “Theater directors of our dreams, [and not] of our own fate.” And conversely, our thoughts must be conscientiously examined before we act. While in acting we mostly have to overcome our weaker self, in thinking we must put to one side the “sense-organ” conscience, the “contrary power of the mind.” It is not sufficient to be a visionary. Each vision requires a double corrective, namely its feasibility in the real world while preserving the principle of decency. Without this check, visions can also lead straight into ruin. Frankl reminds us that we know “since Auschwitz …, what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima …, what is at stake.”

For the humanist, humankind and his legacy to the world, his good works, are a starting point but are not the measure of all things. Like Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Everyman, individuals faced with their own mortality must give of their best, do good works, and devote themselves to something that is larger than they are. They must surpass themselves. “The crisis of humanism begins where the individual stands in the forefront of observations, and becomes the focus of assessment—the yardstick of all evaluation,” wrote Viktor Frankl in Der leidende Mensch.*

The external enemies of humanism are totalitarism and conformism. We must not be deterred from doing what is right by official compulsion or arbitrariness or social expectations. According to Frankl’s works it is our conscience that demands that we maintain our inner freedom despite external dependence. Only an individual “who surpasses himself can grow to become himself.” Our inner enemies are nihilism and existentialism. They deny a meaning to life; the nihilist practices a lack of responsibility towards himself and society; the existentialist counters a meaningless and hence absurd world with the symbol of Sisyphus, who is forced permanently to roll the stone of tribulation, but whose existence ultimately remains without purpose. Frankl argues against this with the “search for meaning,” the value and significance of one’s own free actions and one’s own contribution to the whole. “Adopt a goal, head towards it, achieve it, and you will become another person. Someone who accepts a challenge goes through life differently from someone who lives aimlessly,” he writes.

In his books, Frankl is concerned with the central questions of dignity, meaning, and responsibility. His basic thoughts on these concepts will be outlined below. At the same time we shall immerse ourselves more deeply in the world of Red Bull and will show how Dietrich Mateschitz’s actions were influenced by these concepts, and how they continue to influence Red Bull to this day. Frankl’s search for meaning can be summarized in three concepts that also play a central role for Red Bull: freedom and personal responsibility, the nature of life as a task, and trust and appreciation, together with the method of paradoxical intention. Viktor Frankl’s values form, so to speak, the intellectual framework for this narrative and facilitate our understanding for the connections between the two worlds: a task-oriented corporate culture and the principles of a humanist worldview.

* Viktor Frankl is quoted from the usual editions of his works, lectures and from various websites (see Further Readings in the Appendix). See especially the book Berg und Sinn. Mit Viktor Frankl im Vorstieg by Michael Holzer and Klaus Haselböck, published in 2019.

1 FREEDOM AND PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

“It is not a disgrace to fail to reach one’s goals, but it is a disgrace not to have a goal!”

VIKTOR FRANKL

For Frankl, the respect and dignity of the individual are inalienable. To this respect and dignity belongs the conviction that nothing can compel the individual to his fate, neither genes, nor character, nor circumstances. “Instead of despairing that the concrete circumstances of life do not fulfill existing ideas, Frankl recommended that one should respond to these circumstances,” it states in Ärztliche Seelsorge. Basically, Frankl accomplishes here a “Copernican turn” in the question as to the meaning of life. Individuals have the right and the duty in all situations in life to decide freely and on their own responsibility. We can bring assurance into our own life and the lives of others by means of our free will.

The story with the marble which Frankl narrates in his memoirs Was nicht in meinen Büchern steht, shows clearly what Frankl means by personal responsibility for decisions of conscience. Like his brothers and sisters, Frankl also endeavored to acquire an exit visa during the early 1940s. His sister Stella had already succeeded in leaving for Australia with her husband Walter Bondy, and his brother Walter initially escaped with his wife Else to what he thought was a place of safety in Italy. At this time Frankl was working in the Rothschild hospital in Vienna, and he and his parents were accordingly protected from deportation to concentration camp. In the autumn of 1941, Viktor Frankl was granted an exit visa for America, but his parents were not. It was valid for three weeks and plunged him into a severe inner conflict. Should he leave Austria and continue his studies and teaching at an American university, or remain in Vienna? If he left the country, his parents were certain to be deported to a concentration camp, while if he remained he and his family faced an uncertain future in Austria. He thought again about what his decision should be—this time while listening to organ music in St. Stephen’s Cathedral, although at the time it was forbidden for Jews to enter the church—and then returned home to Czerningasse 6 in the Leopoldstadt district. He saw a piece of marble lying on the table. His father had found it round the corner, by the destroyed synagogue in Tempelgasse, while out for a walk. The stone was a part of the Tablets of Stone with the Ten Commandments from the synagogue. “A Hebrew letter had been engraved onto the stone. My father said: ‘If you are interested, I can tell you which of the Ten Commandments this stone fragment belongs to. Because this letter can only be the first letter of one commandment: Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’ And in this moment I knew: That was the answer. I allowed the visa to lapse.”

Predictably, the decision had severe consequences for Frankl. His young wife Tilly, whom he had met only a short while previously and who was carrying his child, was compelled to have an abortion because Jews were subject to deportation if they became pregnant. The young man could only pursue his beloved hobby, climbing, on rare occasions, and then only at the risk of his own life. To travel to the Mizzi Langer Wall in the Wienerwald without the Star of David on his coat would mean immediate deportation if he ran into a control. A short while later, the Rothschild-Spital was expropriated and repurposed as a military hospital for the SS. Frankl lost his protection from deportation and was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in September 1942 together with his wife, his wife’s mother, and his parents. During the following years his entire family with the exception of his sister in Australia were killed in concentration camps.

Viktor Frankl survived not only because he was lucky. In Auschwitz, where he had been transferred in October 1944, he was in the group destined for the gas chamber, but was able to slip over into the other group of younger, stronger men in a moment when he was apparently not being watched. Either the SS guard had failed to notice or had intentionally looked the other way. Frankl already knew from Theresienstadt that decency and political views did not always mutually define each other.

Frankl also survived because he wanted to survive, in order to present his lecture on logotherapy and existential analysis at the adult education college following this “key experiment,” as he called it—and he wanted to see his beloved mountains once more. On countless occasions while he was in the camp, he imagined the climbing expedition on the Rax, step by step and handhold by handhold. And so “mountain climbing, the memory of what the rock felt like … became one of the reasons to survive the horrors of the concentration camp.” His new life began after he was liberated from Türkheim concentration camp in April 1945. He embarked on it “step by step—in the same way,” and in it he would realize that, “Meaning in life is not only essential, but in this extreme situation is even essential for survival.”

Life confronts us all with decisions which we have to take personally and responsibly. We can only hope that the circumstances and consequences will not be as dramatic as in Viktor Frankl’s case. But the incident with the marble fragment makes it clear that we are called upon, even in the most adverse circumstances, not to become victims of the situation, but to determine our fate ourselves. We are responsible for every moment in our life through our decisions, and the opportunities will be “forfeited” if they are not realized. For Viktor Frankl, life is a novel which is being written in every moment of life. And once something has been entered into the book of life, it can no longer be erased and will remain there—“for all eternity.” At the same time, our own future, that of our fellow-humans and the things around us, will be influenced by these decisions, whether they are big or small. “What I achieve through them, what I ‘realize in this world,’ I am saving in reality and hence am preserving it from transience,” wrote Frankl in Ärztliche Seelsorge.

The individual is responsible for how he decides, and his behavior will not be constrained by circumstances. Frankl rejects determinism, which would make us believe that circumstances or character, descent, genes, or the compulsion of a situation, dictate human behavior. He pleads for the freedom of individuals to decide and hence to take their fate into their own hands. Freedom and responsibility depend on each other, “Human existence [is] being responsible, because it is being free.” And then he writes: “Freedom is not something you have—like something that you could lose; ‘I am’ freedom.” In this respect, Frankl repeatedly suggested in his lectures that, “I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

How the foundation for a modern concern was laid in the early years of Red Bull

“We either make our lives miserable and pile obstacles along our path, or we live consciously and clear away the obstacles on the path towards our goal. The amount of work is the same.”

CARLOS CASTANEDA

The founding years of Red Bull were also characterized by free decisions made primarily by a single person as a matter of personal responsibility. Dietrich Mateschitz is, as it were, Red Bull—and vice-versa. Red Bull is his invention and reflects his thoughts and lifestyle. The success gave Mateschitz the freedom “to give people wings”, so that they can realize their own ideas.

Mateschitz grew up in the Mürz Valley in Styria. His mother, a primary school teacher in St. Marein, brought him up in line with traditional values. Throughout his entire life he believed in a good upbringing in the sense of modesty, straightforwardness, and good manners. After passing his Matura (school-leaving examination) at a boarding school in Graz, he went to Vienna to study at the University of World Trade. “Two or three years longer than I perhaps might have needed,” he said of himself. Here he also attended the lectures of Viktor Frankl, with more enthusiasm than some of the other lectures related to his course of study. After completing his studies, which he achieved in 1972 with a degree in business management, he seriously considered emigrating to California to join the group surrounding the writer Carlos Castaneda, but then decided to learn about marketing at Unilever. After a short period of experience in the sales department at Jacobs Kaffee in Austria, he moved to Blendax, where he was employed as the Global Director of Marketing until he founded Red Bull.

The teachings of Viktor Frankl and Castaneda’s literary figure, Don Juan Matus, alongside a story-book career in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG for short)—were two parallel universes, which eventually no longer fitted together. The breakup came after ten years traveling the world for Lever Brothers, during which Mateschitz always organized his routes in such a way that he had enough space to pursue his passions away from business. “It was all too conventional. People in uniform, suit, tie, and all clutching the same newspaper. I said to myself: ‘As a Styrian born and bred you don’t fit in there.’ And then, with it all, a budget with which ‘you could do a bit of advertising’,” he reported in 2008 in an interview with Die Zeit.* Tired of the stories from the business class, Mateschitz fled from the world of grey suits and founded Red Bull.

The company name was derived from the Thai energy drink Mateschitz often consumed on his business trips to overcome his jet lag and revive himself. His friend and business partner Chalerm Yoovidhva recalled: “Our own company TC Pharmaceuticals and Blendax were business partners. Dietrich came to Bangkok to meet me. He was jet lagged after the long flight from Europe so I offered him a glass of Krating Daeng. It worked. Dietrich’s jet leg disappeared and he was regenerated—and impressed.” Krating Daeng, translated from Thai as Red Bull, would fundamentally change the lives of the two men.

Red Bull was a sort of place of longing for Mateschitz—a place where the two parallel worlds would fuse. His dreams were ambitious and definitely contrary. From the beginning, the projection surface of Red Bull had clear contours and was to leave behind not only the usual marketing mix, which Mateschitz could produce to perfection in his sleep, but also the limitations of the average civilized population, including the predetermined career leaps with their usual attributes and status symbols. Beyond the Ordinary became the DNA of Red Bull—multi-faceted, diverse, and true to the principles of a life in freedom and responsibility. This world was to include a simple, contemplative hermit’s life—one that Mateschitz sometimes led on the beach in Thailand in the hut of his friend and subsequent business partner Chalerm Yoovidhya—as well as extreme experiences like skiing, driving a car or a motorcycle, or complete dedication to the one thing. In his case, that was to be the world of Red Bull. Years later, when Mateschitz was sitting in a London taxi on his way to a shareholder meeting with his product in his hand, he said: “It’s crazy, but everything we do we owe to this can.” And turning to the taxi driver, he added: “Did you know that this can is a once-in-a-century event?”*

The business model behind the can was the positioning of the drink as a luxury and target-group drink, the creation of a completely new communications policy, and the establishment of a global brand with a revolutionary contentmarketing concept. All in all, the implementation of a large-scale marketing idea with a clear mind and open eyes.

At a time in which people were still speaking of founding companies and start-up capital, the realization of this dream was by no means a matter of course. Far removed from the start-up and venture-capital culture of the twenty-first century, Mateschitz was taking on a huge risk at the age of forty. He followed the dictates of his heart. For the first three years the path he trod was a stony one. Mateschitz scraped together all his savings and founded Red Bull in Wiesbaden. For three years he tried to get his energy drink approved in Germany, but the health authorities rejected it with a typical German stubbornness and tenacity. This was despite the fact that, for decades, energy drinks had been sold in their millions in Japan as dietary foods, as so-called over-the-counter (OTC for short) drinks, and accordingly an “epidemiological study of epic proportions” (Dietrich Mateschitz) had taken place there. Taisho, the company that manufactured Lipovitan, the local market leader, was one of the major taxpayers in Japan, a circumstance which—apart from the revitalizing effect of these drinks on long-distance flights—had first given Mateschitz the idea of launching energy drinks in Europe. But at first the authorities were simply not prepared to listen.

These three years were a sort of purgatory, and on more than one occasion Mateschitz saw himself “ending up sleeping under a bridge.” They left their mark on Mateschitz’s further career, and from then onward his motto was: Do not avoid any battle that is worth fighting, and never give up!

Salvation came in the form of a final injection of capital from his Thai partners and a detour to Austria. In 1987 the Austrian Ministry of Health approved Red Bull with its active ingredients taurine, glucuronolactone, and caffeine, as a dietary food through “non-prohibition”. One department of the Ministry of Health had refused approval on the grounds that Red Bull contained potent ingredients and should therefore be classed as a medication, another had simply not seen the need for sugared water containing large amounts of caffeine. Mateschitz had a copy of both these assessments when he demanded that the Ministry decide: