Haagen-Dass & The Honey Bees: Ruminations on Cause-Related Marketing

The mysterious disappearance of honey bee colonies threatens our food supply and is possibly both a consequence and an allegory for our systematic disregard for or destruction of carefully balanced natural ecosystems. This phenomenon caught my attention almost a year ago, and yet somehow the adoption of the beleaguered bees by Haagen-Daas' gives me a funny buzzing sensation in my head.

Honey bees pollinate almost one-third of our food supply. The rapid and unexplained disappearance of vast numbers of colonies reported in 35 US states, like the disappearance of native American colonies in the Southwest, leave behind empty shells of civilizations with scant clues to the causes for their disappearance. Its CSI meets the Nature Channel with potentially serious consequences for our food chain and the planet.

This is a fascinating story, reported on extensively by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker of 6 August 2007 and covered broadly in both the popular and the science press. At last glance, the leading theory dubbed the "colony collapse disorder" is thought to be some kind of  epidemic, though the evidence and the research into the details, the causes, the consequences or the cure are not conclusive.

Enter Haagen-Daas, a General Mills brand licensed and marketed in North America by Nestle.

The brand has aligned itself with the preservation of honey bees by creating a logo bearing a slogan ( HD Heart (graphic) HB in yellow and black bumble bee stripes), introducing a limited edition Vanilla Honey Bee Ice Cream, doling out $250,000 for bee research at Penn State and UC Davis, creating a consciousness raising  website and running a three page ad in the May edition of National Geographic.

Looking through the ad you can almost hear the brand team thinking ... ecology, earth day, leverage natural ingredients, connect with an unclaimed and unassailable good guy cause, use fruits and berries images plus the organic connection between the bees and our products to leverage the franchise and target the premium taste tree-huggers in eco-friendly magazines. For the cost of a single TV spot we can bankroll legitimizing research which can extend the brand message, focus attention on flavor advantages, and connect the brand to the hearts and minds of our customer base using PR and viral tactics.

Call me cynical or call me a practiced marketer. But I've been in a thousand of these meetings where this kind of cause-related thinking makes perfect sense and builds its own internal momentum and constituency. I could write the presentation deck in my sleep.

A huge MNC-owned brand goes back to its quirky roots to put it self on the side of the angels (or the bees), shape a brand message as eco-friendly advocacy and reach out to the public to raise the alarm and move more product by teaching consumers "how you can help." Although it gets a bit funky when one of the helpful suggestions is " Enjoy a pint of Haagen-Daas ice cream's bee dependent flavors and you'll help fund research with the goal of bringing the honey bees back." 

Maybe I'm getting cranky in my old age, but this feels funny to me. I don't believe that buying and eating more super premium ice cream will save the bees. I'm creeped out by the transparency of the marketing thrust and yet I understand where its coming from. And yet I appreciate the targeting and the integration of brand advertising with bee-related content.

Maybe this is a classic example of brand-ad-content synthesis; the holy grail of integrated marketing. Or maybe its just way over the top for my tastes.