Budweiser has the unique opportunity to use it’s scale and global reach to effect real change in the world. As the largest beer brand in the world, Budweiser approached us with a once-in-a-lifetime brief; to identity and develop a platform that makes a tangible and lasting impact on the globe. Budweiser didn’t want a campaign…they wanted a movement. Together, we identified the platform as renewable electricity and laid the strategic foundation for the movement.

The area of energy is broad and we needed to focus. The category has historically portrayed a doom-and-gloom mentality – the existing narrative is all prescriptions to cut back on wasteful energy consumption. Did we want to be a brand that joins the cacophony of politicians and climate change scientists? Did we want to warn about the dangers of fossil fuels on the environment? What kind of energy did the brand care about – oil, gasoline? As the collective team, we narrowed to renewable energy sources, specifically electricity. We wanted to re-frame the conversation from negative to positive with an outlook on the future of energy. Budweiser wanted to take a leadership role and show consumers and other companies that we can make a difference by changing our behavior.

Intentions are well and good but this is a serious issue and the brand needed the world to take it seriously. It needed to put a stake in the ground. Budweiser decided to announce a commitment that all electricity used globally in the brewing process would be sourced from renewable electricity by 2025. To ensure the commitment was heard, Budweiser made the announcement and unveiled the movement’s identity on a global stage at the 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

With the global stage primed, Budweiser will launch the campaign in the U.S. on April 22nd 2018, Earth Day.

To galvanize the movement, we created a symbol and campaign identity. The [100%] symbol was inspired by the battery meter found on many electronic devices and phones. The mark itself is simple and brand-agnostic, made up of brackets that form a battery shape, and the copy “100% renewable electricity” to communicate the commitment. The neutrality of the mark is deliberate, allowing it to be open-sourced to other companies. We’re not the only brand with scale and we invite others to join the movement – to identify and implement renewable electricity resources. In the way that the green tri-arrowed mark has become synonymous with recycling, we too dream that this mark will become synonymous with renewable energy sources and adopted by brands the world over.

Budweiser sells, on average, 41 million bottles of Budweiser every day. And since Bud is brewed for 30 days – longer than any other beer on the market – it’s a an energy-intensive process. The commitment to be 100% reliant on renewable electricity will equate to taking 48,000 passenger vehicles off the road every year.

This is just the beginning. Budweiser announced their commitment at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2018. More and more Budweiser markets will come under the commitment as their renewable electricity resources near 100%.