2017 Winners

Honey Nut Cheerios (HNC) is the top performing cereal brand for General Mills. However, in an increasingly competitive environment, and a category primarily bought and sold on deal, the brand was at risk of losing significant ground. Its core consumer was aging and no appropriate strategy was in place to attract a younger consumer to carry the brand into the future. Honey Nut Cheerios needed a way to show millennials that it cares as much about the world as it does about selling cereal.

Through significant qualitative and quantitative work, the brand identified that it shares a common interest with millennials – devastating effects of a rapidly declining honey bee population, which is responsible for the pollination of 1/3 of fruits and vegetables.

For HNC, honey is in the brand’s name and is a key ingredient in its flagship product, not to mention Buzz, the beloved mascot, is the most recognizable honeybee in the world. Buzz holds the human qualities to energize people around a campaign to save the bees.

As iconic and loved as Buzz the Bee is, he needed to be removed to help people feel the impact of a declining bee population. Nowhere is Buzz more meaningful than on the Honey Nut Cheerios box on the store shelf. Removing Buzz from the box would draw attention to an important cause. But, it wasn’t enough just to raise the issue without a constructive solution.

The brand, along with its agency Cossette, invited consumers to “Bring Back the Bees” by registering online to have wildflower seeds sent to their house so they could plant a viable food source for the honeybees. The brand hit its goal of 35 million seeds in the first week – and later revised it to 110 million, which also disappeared fast. The team created an online video, which featured popular social media videos of humans saving various animals, and asking the viewer to help save the bees, too.

Baseline sales have increased 11.8%, with the original targeted goal of 1% to 2%. The brand exceeded its stated 35 million seeds in the first week and distributed a total of 115 million seeds to Canadians. The video has been viewed 10 million times online. There has also been significant news coverage of the program across the globe (including Time magazine and Fast Company).