The Super Bowl has always been where big advertisers usually clamor to have their latest advertising campaigns launched. Budweiser usually features adorable animals. This year, Budweiser, which has consistently created TV commercials that touch the heart, stirred the hornet’s nest, so to speak.
The company’s Super Bowl entry for this year delivered a strong message – touching on immigration and immigrants to the United States. It stood out, especially among Pres. Trump’s supporters because of the new president’s stand on immigrants and the very recent travel ban announcement.
The Budweiser ad, entitled “Born the Hard Way” shows the time that Adolphus Busch, the co-founder of Anheuser-Busch left Germany to go to the United States in 1857. Busch arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, which was a favorite destination of many German immigrants. He encountered discrimination from many people but he persevered. He founded a company to sell brewery supplies after inheriting a part of his father’s estate. His family was wealthy but the inheritance was unexpected because he had 24 other siblings. He eventually met Everhard Anheuser, also a German immigrant, who owned the Bavarian Brewery Company. Busch later became Anheuser’s son-in-law and partner of Anheuser-Busch, makers of Budweiser.
Too political
Trump’s supporters decried that the TV ad was too political, because it was about the company founders being immigrants. Still many more are praising the company for the message it’s sending across, which for them is timely because of the stance the U.S. president takes regarding immigration. The president’s supporters are now calling for people to boycott the beer brand through social media.
Fictional
The controversial TV ad might be timely but the company says that the ad was in the works long before the U.S. elections. Company representatives explained that the story was largely fictional, a dramatization (with poetic and creative license) of the German-born Adolphus Busch migrating to the United States to go after his dream. The ad also showed Busch being on the receiving end of verbal and physical abuse and anti-immigrant insults. Later it showed how he met with Everhard Anheuser.
In reality, Busch and Anheuser became partners because he married Anheuser’s daughter, Lilly. The Budweiser beer was in fact developed several years after the death of Anheuser. While there was no record of Busch being a victim of anti-immigrant abuses, many German immigrants actually had such. Even his wife Lilly was accused of being a spy for the Germans because of their frequent trips to Germany. During a visit to their family in Germany in World War I, Lilly was subjected to a full body search to ensure that she was not carrying classified documents.
The launch of the ad is believed to be very timely because it came at the heels of President Trump announcing a travel ban. Still the brewery company Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV maintains that the ad was created to pay tribute to many foreigners’ dream of making it big in America.
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