Pick a lane!#^@!!

I am not really upset. I just thought I would get your attention with a snappy title. Well I hope this won't get sloppy, but I was excited to see that Goodby, Silverstein & Partners had cleaned up at the Cannes Lion awards in, well, Cannes (France). In addition to Interactive Agency of the Year, they claimed a Silver for their Haagen Daz Loves Honey Bees campaign. They produced a great spot that chronicled the progression of the promotion. Going interactive was a shift for HD. While I would be hard pressed to tell you how many honey bees they saved, or how it impacted the sale of ice cream (somebody probably could), it did create some buzz (sorry).

Of course, I am only interested in things like this for two reasons, my kids and my customers (in that order). Well if you check out the credits (dig deep) for the HD campaign you'll find Account Manager Erin Fromherz. Can I get a whooo hooo?

OK, I got that out of my system. On to the point of this post. It is usually marketing types who position campaigns like this as a groundswell (read article on Hot Tomatoes), but like Gandhi used to say "we must be the change we wish to see"... Quite a marketing guy that Gandhi.

The point is a 'groundswell' comes when like-minded people converge on a movement, such as the slow food or organic gardening movement. So what does this have to do with the damned honey bees? Well, grasshopper, we are all connected. No bees, no honey; no honey, no money. If you want to get the attention of business (or anyone else for that matter) in this country you have to talk in dollars and sense.

What Haagen Daz, or rather those clever folks at GS&P, realized is that this stuff does matter. People are interested in the larger picture. While, yes, a cynic might just trod over the issue with $200 sneakers (made in a sweat shop in Asia for $5), people do get the big picture. They can connect the dots between SUVs and icebergs.

Now, I am not going to go all global warming on you, but you don't have to be Albert Einstein to know that no bees is no good for us (oh yeah, or the planet). No one can tell you exactly what is happening to those bees, but I am thinking it is one of those "we don't know what we don't know" situations.

Chilling. Big, big, big problem. However, as I get older I realize that it is baby steps, baby. Part of the HD loves HB campaign included something as clever as an ad which was printed on recycled stock. You could tear it out of the magazine, crumple it up and plant it. Wildflowers would grow and it would be one small step for bees, one big step for mankind. But that was just one piece of a very complex organism that included bee fans supporting the cause with self made videos on YouTube. Check this one out. I liked it. So did the other 1,145,000 +/- people who downloaded that sucker.

My point (I knew I had one somewhere) is that good marketing does more than sell stuff, but it also connects with people in meaningful (and not-so) ways that motivate them to do something. If you watch this video (on the Cannes Lion site, make sure to click on the capital) then you will get a sense of what kind of commitment it takes to create that ephemeral 'viral' marketing we all count on.

Haagen Daz was sold on the idea of committing to a new type of marketing, and a message that meant something to them, and as it turns out, those people in Cannes. HD made a decision on a very specific message (bees), but with a message that was global. It was their commitment that got them from a clever idea to a movement that link arms with other like minded movements. People do care about this stuff.

I do, or I wouldn't have written this stupid post.