Love what Häagen-Dazs did to generate a little buzz about their ice cream this summer–it’s a great example of how Marketing for Good and Marketing as Service can overlap. The program which was written up quite succinctly in Brandweek:
The Challenge: Ice cream stalwart Häagen-Dazs was feeling the pinch when honeybees started inexplicably disappearing, since 30 of the brand’s 73 flavors use honey to contribute to their flavor. Strawberry just isn’t strawberry without some honey, really. So the brand decided to adopt the issue of the shrinking bee population by launching a multiplatform campaign, via Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, San Francisco. The effort is designed to raise public awareness of this honeybee deficit.
The Plan: A two-minute video called “Bee-Boy dance crew drops dead” was introduced in July. It features a dance crew in bee outfits, doing a “bee dance” to an instrumental hip-hop track, complete with DJ, also in a black and yellow bee outfit. It was disseminated to bloggers who tended to embrace social causes and youth efforts and was introduced in chat sites as well. After all of the dancers disappear, the viewer is directed to the helpthehoneybees.com site. The Feed Company, Los Angeles, handled the viral video aspect of the campaign.
The Results: The video generated more than 2 million views in two weeks and drew over 3,500 comments on YouTube. More than 150 blogs featured the video and it was part of over 11,000 Web forum discussion sessions. The video maintains a 4 1/2 star rating on YouTube.
Both the video and the website are nicely done. What I particularly like is The Bee Book which is both entertaining and educational for kids and adults alike. Kudos to Goodby for delivering genuine value to consumers rather than just reminding us how great Häagen-Dazs tastes.
