We recently covered the story of Heaven Hill and their partner Nature’s Methane running into trouble convincing residents near their distillery that a biogas plant was safe. While doing some research for that project, we came across a related story about Toyota trying to convince people that using cow manure to create energy to run a car is good thing. It’s not exactly the same thing but, it does show how there are many ways to tell a story. In the Toyota case they turned to a story literally “Fueled by Bullsh*t”. Let me add that I am not normally a fan of using curse words to tell a story but, in the case of Toyota with its tongue in cheek approach, it was contextual and that’s what gets people engaged.
Related stories.
- Heaven Hill $40 Million Plan to Convert Spent Grain into Biogas Runs into Opposition
- What is an Anaerobic Digester & How Does It Create Renewable Energy?
Toyota took the bull by the horns to tell a story of taking manure and converting it into hydrogen to fuel cars. Let’s face it, in today’s fast paced, soundbite driven, social media world, you’ve got to tell a great story and they’ve done just that. The video below has over 800,000 views on YouTube. That’s a lot of viral influence.
Conversation between the Toyota Engineer and a Farmer.
Scott Blanchet, Toyota Engineer: Wow Ron, look at this.
Ron, Dairy Farmer: Yeah, this is the stuff.
Scott: So what do you see when you see these piles?
Ron: Manure.
Scott: When I look at these piles I see an enormous amount of energy. And I was hoping we could run a little experiment with your help. I’d like to see if we can take manure, strip the hydrogen out and see if we could use it to power a car.
Ron: Sounds crazy but let’s do it.
Fueled by Bullsh*t
Full Circle: They get into the car running on manure and travel back to the farm.
Ron: We are driving down the road, running on bullsh*t!
Heaven Hill recently stepped into a big pile of manure with its effort to build a biogas system on its property to convert the spent grains from its distillery operations into renewable natural gas that can be used for transportation or sold to the local gas company. They have an opportunity to tell a similar story with the grains from the farm to the energy produced by the biogas project. It’s not a simple story but one that can be told for the entire distillery industry. Time for a redux.
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