Essay on Budweiser: Wind Never Felt Better

Abstract

‘Wind Never Felt Better,’ gives Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercial for 2019 highlighting the tale of the company’s dedication to renewable sources of energy in order to create a future that is more sustainable. The ad presents the legendary Budweiser Clydesdales, April, the Budweiser Dalmatian, and wind turbines set to Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. The campaign and its goals are based on Anheuser-Sustainability Busch’s Goals for 2025. Budweiser said that it will donate clean energy to Atlanta, the host city, for powering Super Bowl week, reiterating its pledge. Bud is counterbalancing 100 percent of the electricity required for Super Bowl week with clean, wind-based renewable energy by donating this electricity to Atlanta, a city with high sustainability aspirations.

Introduction

Every story stems from a creative source to touch the emotions of its target audience and create change. The spark that spurs ideas of creativity and invention in a business story occurs within the right conditions. It influences people’s thoughts and helps to connect better with the story teller.

The capacity to tell a business story is highly regarded in the corporate realm. This essay will study the commercial by Budweiser to establish how the elements of a business story impact the target audience (Anheuser-Busch, 2021). A story denotes a series of connected events that entails one or more characters with an emotional connection. The commercial “Wind Never Felt Better” by Budweiser fits this definition of a business story. The simple business story involves a dog, a team, and a greenlight to sustainability. The dog sits atop a Clydesdale-drawn wagon passing through wind-turbine-dotted hills whilst the “Blowin’ in the Wind” song by Bob Dylan subtly reinforces the slogan and theme, “Now Brewed with Wind Power.” While it is clear that Budweiser’s commercial embodies all parts of a story, the question we need to answer is whether it fits the context of business storytelling. Aristotle noted that emotion rather than intellect is the way to influence people. Also, in their definition of business storytelling, Noddings and Witherell say that “We learn from stories. More important, we come to understand – ourselves, others, and even the subjects we teach and learn. Stories engage us. … Stories can help us to understand by making the abstract concrete and accessible. What is only dimly perceived at the level of principle may become vivid and powerful in the concrete. Further, stories motivate us. Even that which, we understand at the abstract level, may not move us to action, whereas a story often does (1991, p. 279-280).” Budweiser’s commercial is an anecdote that uses a combination of what they stand for, what they do, success, as well as the future to connect with the emotions of its audience. The company has an explicit commitment to renewable energy, considering that renewable energy is taking centre stage of commercial ventures globally (CleanTechnica, 2019).

Critical Analysis

It is crucial to learn to disparagingly assess any media works, including websites, adverts, TV programs, films, magazines, books, music, and video shows in the contemporary media-rich society. In the context of business storytelling, Noddings and Witherell (1991), advance several aspects of business story literacy. These concepts can be applied to the 2019 Budweiser Super Bowl commercial to figure out why fossil fuels and the wind form the antagonist and protagonist, respectively.

Storyteller and Purpose

Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser is the author and storyteller of our context with the main purpose of creating a defined appeal to a green audience using its Super Bowl LIII commercial, titled “Wind Never Felt Better” to escalate their efforts towards stopping the use of fossil fuels. With wind as the protagonist, the company looks to solve a climate change problem created by fossil fuels, the antagonist in order to achieve clean, sustainable energy use throughout the world (UCS, 2017).

Emotional Trigger Techniques

There is a calculated move to appeal to the eco-conscious audience by touching their emotions through what the company is doing to address the transformation to renewable energy sources and realize a clean world. Many strategies have been meticulously built into this ad in order to match commonly-accepted Super Bowl commercial demographic conventions, including piquing audience interest in Anheuser-Busch. The fact that the “Wind Never Felt Better” appears to have been shot with a drone-mounted camera – the shot drifts and floats, dives and soars into the sky, which would probably be more intriguing without the rising action. It invites the audience to join the team on their journey, giving them a sense of flight and metaphorical freedom. In the commercial, Dylan sings that the answer is blowin’ in the breeze on many levels – climate change, social inequity, and darn excellent beer will all be the result if the audience purchases into the company’s product range (USA TODAY, 2019).

Points of View Portrayed

Wind-based energy forms an essential element of the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is a feasible and clean substitute for fossil fuels, as well as the prevalent global capability of wind power offers numerous economic and environmental benefits. In the commercial, the company seems to relish the thrill in being pioneer Anheuser-Busch brand as well as the premiere major beer brand to embrace brewing using 100% renewable wind-powered electricity. This is a great opportunity for the company to encourage other eco-conscious individuals and firms in their efforts to look for a more sustainable future. Given that climate change was a highly politicized matter in the Donald Trump era, discussions around environmental issues was not entirely risk-free. However, Budweiser’s advert is unlikely to elicit much criticism, given that the brewer is discussing its own operations rather than criticizing or preaching.

Challenging Viewpoints

Electricity can be difficult to comprehend owing to the fact that it is not something that the general public sees in everyday life. Electricity activism, whilst omnipresent and vital, necessitates determining environmental influence as well as empowering customers to adopt alternative energy. In other industries, this is an issue. Wind energy, for example, is still facing substantial challenges. Some of these problems are intrinsic in with any form of new technology, while others come from a prejudiced regulatory system and market. Capital expenses, or the upfront cost of developing and installation of solar and wind farms, are the most obvious and most reported obstacle to sustainable sources of energy, according to the Union for Concerned Scientists. Wind, as with the majority of renewables, is low-cost to run, with no fuel costs and no maintenance. As a result, the majority of the costs are incurred in the development of technology (Anheuser-Busch, 2021). As opposed to natural gas, coal, and nuclear power, wind uses a decentralized paradigm with smaller producing stations spreading over a vast region and collaborate to generate electricity. The requirement to position objects like wind-based turbines plus solar-generation farms. Discussions, contracts, consents, and interactions with the community are all required, which can raise costs and kill or delay projects. Because wind power is still in its infancy, most of what is now in place was designed to feed massive fossil fuel and nuclear power plants (Anheuser-Busch, 2021).

Conclusion

There is an implicit theme that fixing issues is more essential to assigning blame. The company shows that cooperation is more valuable than punishment when it comes to solving the issue of climate change and sustainable energy use. To assert its commitment to renewable energy, the firm’s operations are leveraging alternative energy sources to power its logistics fleets as well as its breweries. Through the same commercial, the company was promising that it will power Atlanta with 100% renewable wind-based energy throughout the Super Bowl LIII in 2019. The time of the story is between 2019 when the video was shot to date, and beyond. Likewise, the space of the story is Atlanta, where the firm’s production facility is based, and the host to the Super Bowl LIII in 2019. Wind takes the protagonist role with the help of Anheuser-Busch InBev to vanquish fossil fuels, the antagonist, who creates conflict by driving global warming and climate change. It is the desire of Anheuser-Busch InBev, however, to resort to renewable energy sources for powering its breweries as well as verticalized operations. This helps Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser to create an emotional appeal to the green following through its Super Bowl LIII commercial. With more people lobbying the United States to stop burning fossil fuels, the company looks forward to its beer reflecting the clean and green-ness they envision in the world, thus creating an emotional connection with the green audience. In this regard, according to Greimas’ model, the burning of fossil fuels is part of the action since Anheuser-Busch’s Budweiser seeks to create a society that relies on renewable sources of energy and stop global emissions of greenhouse gases that fuel the climate change crisis.

References

Anheuser-Busch. (2021). Anheuser-Busch invests in renewable electricity. Anheuser-Busch | America’s Best-Loved Brewery and Beers. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.anheuser-busch.com/community/initiative/renewable-electricity.html

CleanTechnica. (2019, July 22). In budweiser’s “Wind never felt better” Super Bowl commercial, renewable energy takes center stage. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/03/in-budweisers-wind-never-felt-better-super-bowl-commercial-renewable-energy-takes-center-stage/

UCS. (2017). Barriers to renewable energy technologies. Union of Concerned Scientists. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-energy/renewable-energy/barriers-to-renewable-energy#.XFbU-OzYqt0

USA TODAY. (2019, January 23). Budweiser’s latest Super Bowl commercial has a dog, Bob Dylan and the clydesdales. Retrieved October 2, 2021, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/Ad-Meter/buzz-meter/2019/01/23/super-bowl-budweisers-latest-super-bowl-ad-has-all/2651361002/

Witherell, C., & Noddings, N. (1991). Stories lives tell: Narrative and dialogue in education. New York : Teachers College Press.