Marketers Wax Enthusiastic Over Bees and Honey

via  http://www.nytimes.com

COINCIDENCE or not, as the denizens of Madison Avenue seek to generate “buzz” — positive word of mouth — among consumers, they are increasingly turning to bees and honey as marketing tools.

Decades ago, young viewers of “Romper Room” were introduced to characters named Mr. Do-Bee and Mr. Don’t-Bee as shoppers were asked to buy Bit-O-Honey candy, Honey Maid grahams and Pine Brothers honey glycerin tablets. And a brand mascot named Buffalo Bee peddled “the most bee-licious cereals ever” with this jingle: “I’m Buffalo Bee, take my advice, get Nabisco Wheat Honeys, also Rice.” 

More recently, experts say, the “foodie” boom in exploring the provenance and improving the quality of what Americans eat and drink has generated a swarm of brands related to honey and bees. That success has crossed over into other consumer categories, including cosmetics, a fragrance named Honey Marc Jacobs and even a revival of the Dodge Super Bee muscle car, rebranded as the Dodge Charger SRT8 Super Bee. 

“When we look at how America is cooking, there’s an ever-growing interest in quality ingredients, artisanal ingredients,” said Maile Carpenter, editor in chief of Food Network Magazine, a joint venture of Hearst and Scripps Networks Interactive. “And honey is easy-access artisanal food.”

“It’s no longer just the requisite bear in the cupboard,” she said, referring to honey bottles in ursine shapes. “I was up at a cider mill in Connecticut over the weekend, and for the first time I saw a honey stand. There was a huge line; I thought it was for doughnuts. It was a guy selling local honey.”

Beekeeping has become a pursuit of stars who appear in Food Network Magazine and on the Food Network and Cooking Channel cable networks, Ms. Carpenter said, listing Ted Allen, Jose Garces, Jean-George Vongerichten and the Fabulous Beekman Boys, Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge.

“It’s got a great cool factor,” she added. “It’s not as extreme as raising goats.” (Watch this space to see if goats turn into the next ad trend.) 

“Honey has risen” in the estimation of marketers “the same way that olive oil has and cheese has,” said Zeke Freeman, who owns Bee Raw Honey and sponsors a “Save the Bees” fund-raising effort in social media and online in response to a phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.

The centerpiece of the effort is a Web site for a fake company, Be A Bee Inc., with a home page that declares: “Bees all over the world are dying. Now is the time to invest in the human pollination market.” The effort was created for Bee Raw Honey by the New York office of CHI & Partners, part of WPP. 

Some brands point to roots that predate the current fascination with bees and honey.

“I like to say we were part of this trend even before it was a trend,” said Jon Schlesinger, vice president for marketing at Burt’s Bees in Durham, N.C., because the founders of Burt’s Bees, Roxanne Quimby and Burt Shavitz, “were selling honey out of the back of their truck 30 years ago.” The company became part of the Clorox Company in 2007. 

Mr. Schlesinger and Mariah Eckhardt, director for marketing at Burt’s Bees, said they were not worried that the category would become overcrowded. “I don’t see it as a danger,” he said. “Even as more people market bee-oriented products, that has a halo effect back on our products.” The primary creative agency for Burt’s Bees is Baldwin& in Raleigh, N.C. 

Sometimes, apparently, it may not matter whether a bee-related or honey-related product is a pioneer or a newbie. Although “we weren’t the first to introduce a honey or a flavored whiskey product,” said Casey Nelson, senior brand manager for the Jack Daniel’s flavor portfolio at Brown-Forman in Louisville, Ky., “consumers’ continued propensity” for such tastes meant “it was fitting that the world’s largest whiskey brand be a participant.” 

So Brown-Forman brought out Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey in April 2011. “Its flavor is honey,” one ad declared. “Its soul is Jack.” The product “continues to exceed our expectations,” Mr. Nelson said, remaining “one of the fastest-growing spirits brands in the industry.” Ads for Tennessee Honey, featuring characters known as the King Bee and his Swarm, are created by Arnold Worldwide in Boston, part of the Havas Creative division of Havas. 

Another bee, named Buzz, is the brand mascot for Honey Nut Cheerios, sold by General Mills since 1979. It is the best-selling cereal in the country, the company said, outselling even its forebear, Cheerios. 

The honey-flavored segment of the cereal market is expanding rapidly, however. For instance, Post Honey Bunches of Oats, introduced in 1989, now has 13 varieties, and both types of new Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut cereal are honey-flavored: Golden Nut Honey and Roasted Nut and Honey O’s.

So General Mills decided it would “be interesting and fun if Buzz came out of the hive and into pop culture,” said Scott Lee, associate marketing director for Honey Nut Cheerios in Golden Valley, Minn. The character got its own Twitter account, which now has more than 26,800 followers, and appears in a series of commercials with the rapper Nelly that transformed the line “Must be the money” from Nelly’s “Ride Wit Me” to “Must be the honey.” 

Not every bee or honey marketing effort is received sweetly. A blogger on The Huffington Post criticized the commercials, by the Saatchi & Saatchi division of the Publicis Groupe, in a post with the headline “Nelly and Honey Nut Cheerios Bee Cruelly Suck the Life Out of Your Millennial Childhood.”