Ads featuring wind send a powerful message
If you were watching the NFL playoffs this weekend, you might have seen this ad for Duracell batteries. The brilliant 30-second spot demonstrates the ability of wind turbines to help deliver a powerful, positive message, even when the subject is only tangentially related to wind. It is batteries that are being advertised, after all, and they could be powering anything--a digital camera, for instance. But here they are being used to power a voltmeter, a key piece of safety equipment used by wind technicians when they are performing maintenance on a turbine. But wait--there's more. The technicians using the meter--and who are photographed standing dramatically atop the towers--are students at a wind technician training course at Iowa Lakes Community College, a school that pioneered wind tech training several years ago. The result: at the end of the 30 seconds, the positive wind energy message, along with a submessage about education, is as memorable as the Duracell battery, perhaps more so, because of the turbines' sheer visual presence as they gently dominate the bucolic rural landscape while a child stares up at them in awe from a passing automobile.
