On 28th November 1970, roughly three weeks after Simon returned from Japan, the large-scale marketing campaign of Atari and Red Bull finally started. Both companies announced together that on 14th December 1970 Red Bull would release its first energy drink across the United States.
The first badge would be filled into special first editions cans and the total amount of those cans would be 10 million. Even though the description of the effect of energy drinks was making people extremely curious, the real big news was the marketing campaign of the new Atari game and the following event.
When gamers across the United States, who already played and loved the snake arcade machine, learned about the release of a completely new game they were all ecstatic. But when they learned that after buying a can of Red Bull, they could even win up to one million dollars if they reached the highest score in America, they went completely insane. Many people were already playing games on the Atari arcade machine anyways and now they all desperately wanted the new game Tetris.
The major bar and supermarket owners of New York, that already paid off their investment in their arcade machines over the last half a year, were already extremely hungry for the new arcade game. When they learned about the concept of the special Red Bull version of the new arcade machine and the upcoming event in which their customers could earn one million dollars in cash, they didn't even bother to think about it and instantly decided to pay for the arcade machine.
After earning a large amount of money in recent months the faith of those New York bar owners reached a high level in Atari. Some were even invited to the headquarters of Atari on Staten Island to test the new game Tetris.
After playing around for more than an hour everybody was sure that this investment would become profitable. Red Bull gained a large amount of publicity with these marketing moves and passionate gamers across the United States learned about this energy drink that was supposedly invented specially for gamers like them. Their love for the Snake Game and their hopes for Tetris slowly combined with the Red Bull beverage company and they all wanted to at least try the effect of this drink once.
The synergy of Red Bull and Atari showed their immense effect for the very first time. Tanja and Dennis were completely convinced that the decision to connect the two companies together closely was the right path to take. They used the increased production capacity to stock up 15000 special Red Bull arcade machines and 35000 standard arcade machines. They might be able to produce some more arcade machines by the end of the year, but this already prepared stock was sold out after making it available on the market within 48 hours.
The arcade machines were shipped out on 7th December 1970, seven days before the start of the event, to prepare every machine and guarantee a smooth start of the event.
Selling the complete stock of November and early December resulted in a revenue of roughly 175 million dollars and a profit of roughly 75 million dollars. This could still be increased until the end of the year by another 20 million dollars in profit. Everybody at Atari was overwhelmed and excited with the success of the new game Tetris and the marketing campaign with Red Bull. Even working in three shifts at the production base on Staten Island was acceptable for all the new employees, because everybody was very hopeful for the future of the company and was looking forward to the large number of bonuses promised by the management team.
The same situation could be found at the Red Bull production base in New Jersey. Caroline and her management team prepared 10 million cans of first edition Red Bull for the market opening of their new energy drink. With the increase of exposure and the constant news those 10 million cans were sold out incredibly quickly. Many of the owners of a special edition Red Bull arcade machine ordered the newest Red Bull as well. 10 million cans of Red Bull didn't even look like much after the whole American market wanted to buy them.
Caroline and her team were already planning their first financing in the near future and wanted to buy two additional production bases, one on the west coast of the United States and one in Europe, in order to deal with the increasing market demands. After roughly planning their business strategy Simon offered a premium price strategy which resulted in approximately 10% of profit for every can Red Bull sold. This included all the variable and fixed production and marketing costs. Just the 10 million initial Red Bull cans already generated a little over one million dollars in profit, because the initial price for a can of Red Bull was set at 1,19 dollars.
For reference, the amount of Red Bull sold in Simon's previous life in 2012 amounted to 11,8 billion cans. Their market profitability, even after the insane marketing costs Red Bull invested, was still around the 10% profit mark for every can of Red Bull.
The Smith family was extremely pleasantly surprised with the large success of the two newly founded companies and even more grateful that Simon and Caroline allowed the family to invest a small portion of the initial investment for the founding of Red Bull. But overall, the family only owned about 2% of the Red Bull in total, while a major part of the shares was still held by Caroline and Simon. But both agreed that they would release 30% of the shares during the first financing, which would leave Simon with approximately 40% of the shares and Caroline with 28% of the shares.
Not only was the profit incredibly high, but the review of Tetris and Red Bull by the customers was also great. Simon expected Tetris to do well, because even in his last life with all the different games available Tetris was always an eternal classic game, but in this era with little to no game entertainment Tetris was explosive. Everybody wanted to play the game, and nobody had anything bad to say about the game. The event was already successful after just a few days and major newspapers across the country published news about long lines of people queuing up to play on the special Red Bull arcade machines.