About the Campaign
Beginning in 2006, beekeepers around the world began to notice a sharp decline in their honey bee population. Honey bees, a vital link in the agricultural chain, pollinate an estimated $15 million worth of fruit, seed, and fiber crops each year, and 1/3 of all foods are pollinated by honey bees. Without the pollination of honey bees, the world’s agricultural supply would dwindle to nothing. The government began to take action to investigate what was destroying the bee population. The crisis was termed Colony Collapse Disorder (Fearn-Banks p. 168).
Although the bee crisis had not yet affected Haagen-Dazs ice cream, the company chose to get involved to help restore the honey bee colonies. “Because the Haagen-Dazs brand uses only all-natural ingredients in its recipes, more than 50 percent of the brand's flavors are bee-built, meaning they use ingredients pollinated by the bees (PR Newswire).”
In 2008, the Haagen-Dazs brand launched the HD loves HB campaign to generate awareness of the honey bee crisis. The company saw an opportunity to use the success and popularity of its ice cream brand to inform consumers of the importance of honey bees, and to underscore its commitment to using only all natural ingredients. (Fearn-Banks p. 169).
The campaign had three goals: business, awareness, and behavior. The first objective was to drive sales and to increase 2008 revenue growth by more than 1% over 2007. The second objective was to increase consumer media impressions on the brand by 25% over 2007, working towards a goal of 125 million media impressions. Lastly, the company wanted to convince consumers to plant bee-friendly habitats with a first-year goal of planting 1 million bee-friendly flowers. Haagen-Dazs also wanted to drive consumers to visit the microsite (HD loves HB )while increasing consumer recommendations of the brand (Fearn-Banks p. 169).
Haagen-Dazs’ target public was adults ranging from 35 to 54. The brand assumed the target public were highly educated, active, and that most have children. Through focus groups, the company found that Haagen-Dazs consumers are happy to do their part to contribute to a sustainable society, especially through small, hassle-free actions. The brand wanted a way to give consumers a way to engage with the brand by educating them about the honey bee plight. Haagen-Dazs wanted to become the first national consumer brand to bring light to the issue and to put the cause on consumers’ radar (Fearn-Banks p. 170).
Haagen-Dazs started created a new flavor to commemorate the campaign and bring awareness to the honey bee crisis. “The company embarked on a number of bee-related philanthropic initiatives, including the donation of a portion of the proceeds from sales of their new Vanilla Honey Bee ice cream and all bee-dependent flavors to support CCD research at Penn State and UC Davis. Products that rely on the bees were labeled "honeybee-dependent" and tagged with an HDlovesHB icon”(Feed Company). Haagen-Dazs promised to donate a portion of proceeds from its honeybee brand back to research on the topic.
Along with the support of scientific and beekeeping community, the brand conducted print, online, radio, and broadcast outreach, distributed B-roll to regional and national networks, and engaged several bee experts as spokespeople on media tours. Haagen-Daaz also launched a Million Seeds Challenge. To reach bee supporters online, the brand used Craigslist and MeetUp.com to challenge them to help plant one million seeds to create bee-friendly habitats. HDlovesHB seed packets were given out and shipped for planting.
Results
Responses to the HDlovesHB campaign exceeded all expectations. One month after the campaign launch, there was a 5% April sales increase. There were more than 277 million media impressions across more than 1,000 different media placements. In a media audit, 93% of media coverage was overwhelmingly positive towards the brand. This represented a 12 point increase in the level of PR over previous quarters. As a result of the “buzz,” the Häagen-Dazs brand experienced its largest single base-line sales increase (5.2%) in more than a year, and a serious environmental issue received major media attention" (Ketchum.com)
Over 470,000 visitors swarmed helpthehoneybees.com, and over 950 consumers and organizations contacted Haagen-Dazs with compliments, suggestions, and offers to collaborate. At the end of year one, an omnibus survey showed a "large increase in honey bee awareness, knowledge and brand recall, an eight-point increase in awareness of the honey bee issue, and a six-point increase in accurate identification of the issue. Haagen-Dazs had the highest unaided brand recall among consumers identifying companies/organizations working to help the honey bees" (Fearn-Banks p. 174). Furhtermore, over 1,200,000 “HD loves HB” seeds were distributed to individuals / community groups, teachers and garden clubs to be planted.
Evaluation
The HDlovesHB campaign had many strengths and very few weaknesses. The Haagen-Dazs brand is a widely recognized brand, allowing it to reach many consumers. Because no other brand had previously taken on the bee crisis, Haagen-Dazs saw a unique opportunity to educate the public and encourage involvement to save the bees, while at the same time bringing awareness to the brand and its products. By developing a project of corporate social responsibility, Haagen-Dazs was able to successfully communicate to the public the company's concern about the issues that affect us all and that profit is not everything. By following their goals for the campaign , Haagen-Dazs was able to meaningfully reach consumers and educate them on ways to help save the honey bee.
Although the target audience was adults ages 35 to 54, Haagen-Dazs could have reached out to younger generations to join the fight to save the honey bee. Most communication was direct, one-way, and aimed towards older adults. There was little to no social media created for the campaign; if the company had utilized Facebook or other social media websites to organize special events and spread awareness of the campaign, it would have helped target a younger generation in the non-traditional news media.
Analysis of PR Efforts
In public relations, it is always important to conduct environmental scanning to detect possible threats to the organization. Although the honey bee crisis had not yet directly affected Haagen-Dazs, the possibility of a crisis looms in the near future. Haagen-Dazs' choice to utilize risk management and get involved to save the honey bees benefited the brand not only for their own products and profits, but for the brand's overall reputation as well. Because Haagen-Dazs knew that their business could potentially be destroyed without the honey bees' pollination of crops, they acted proactively to minimize the impact of uncertain events or crises. Haagen-Dazs' use of a public relations campaign that was for a cause helped create an emotional connection not only between consumers and the honey bee crisis, but an emotional connection to the brand as well.
Through reputation management, Haagen-Dazs was able to create and maintain a strong reputation among consumers by creating a campaign that was beneficial to both the environment and the organization. The objectives for the campaign were linked to research, explicit, measurable, time definite, challenging and attainable. The two-step flow of communication theory observes that the media influences opinion leaders, who in turn influence other people. Haagen-Dazs enlisted the help of bee experts to create the key messages for the campaign, which they hoped would be absorbed by opinion leaders in the target public and then be passed on through word-of-mouth. The organization did a good job in seeking out people who cared about the issue and utilizing experts on the subject to spread the word through media. By announcing the campaign first to the beekeeping and scientific community, experts from the field were happy to serve as brand ambassadors who helped spread the word about the campaign within the industry and to other important influencers.
Haagen-Dazs was able to successfully engage consumers in a genuine manner by utilizing many different public relations strategies. Haagen-Dazs utilized strategic philanthropy, activism, special events, audience participation, publicity, and newsworthy information to help drive the HDlovesHB campaign.
Haagen-Dazs was able to successfully engage consumers in a genuine manner by utilizing many different public relations strategies. Haagen-Dazs utilized strategic philanthropy, activism, special events, audience participation, publicity, and newsworthy information to help drive the HDlovesHB campaign.
Haagen-Dazs was extremely successful in gaining brand recognition and awareness for being involved with saving the honey bees. As suggested in the Agenda-Setting Theory, what the media decides to report on consequently become the issues the public is interested in. Because of Haagen-Dazs' effort to get the issue publicity, there was an overwhelming amount of media coverage, which brought the issue to consumers' minds and prompted them to take action. Had Haagen-Dazs not launched this campaign, many people would not have known about the plight of the honey bee and its detrimental affects on our food supply. Essentially, Haagen-Dazs' actions prompted the public to think about the plight of the honey bees and to take action to save them before a crisis unfolds.
Sources
Fearn-Banks, K. Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach. (2011). Case: Haagen Dazs and the Honey Bees.
Feed Company. "Case Study: Häagen-Dazs Viral Video Helps Honey Bees Cause." http://www.feedcompany.com/wp-content/uploads/feed-company-haagen-dazs-bee-case-study.pdf
PR Newswire. "Bee-Friendly Haagen-Dazs(R) Brand Supports Proposed Overturn of New York City Beekeeping Ban". http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bee-friendly-haagen-dazsr-brand-supports-proposed-overturn-of-new-york-city-beekeeping-ban-85189837.html
No comments:
Post a Comment