“You don’t look like you’re from around here”
Like nearly all immigrants, the “King of Beers” had humble beginnings when landing on America’s shores. And Budweiser is using the Super Bowl to remind everyone that great things can happen when we embrace strangers to a new land, instead of shutting them out.
It’s a message that seems clearly timed to run counter to the anti-immigration executive orders being pushed by President Trump and his administration.
“This is the story of our founder’s ambitious journey to America in pursuit of his dream: to brew the King of Beers,” Budweiser said in a statement about the commercial, which shows the company’s founder Adolphus Busch arriving in New Orleans after leaving his home country of Germany.
Throughout the 60-second commercial, entitled “Born the Hard Way,” Busch encounters prejudice, hardship and even flees a sinking ship engulfed in flames.
“You don’t look like you’re from around here,” one man on the street tells Busch, as another stranger nearly knocks him over into the muddy, unpaved streets.
Worse for wear, he makes his way to St. Louis where a stranger buys him a beer, offering a brief respite. That simple gesture sets the stage for what has become a 141-year brewing empire.
However, the company says the commercial has actually been in the works and was not produced with the intent of criticizing Trump or his policies. “There’s really no correlation with anything else that’s happening in the country,” Budweiser Executive Ricardo Marques told AdWeek in an interview. “We believe this is a universal story that is very relevant today because probably more than any other period in history today the world pulls you in different directions, and it’s never been harder to stick to your guns.”
Still, it will be impossible for anyone watching to not make a direct connection between the harrowing story of one very famous immigrant and the fate of countless other potential future visionaries whose destinies hang periously in the balance.
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