Title: National Humming Bee Campaign

Tagline: Make Every Day a Humming Bee Day!

Description:

Humming Bee Campaign (NHBC) is a Mini Nonprofit Awareness Campaign to promote awareness of honey bees, beekeeping, provide links to research and educational information in support of honey bee and their role as a part of the larger ecosystem in North America.

Table of Contents:

• • Part One: Introduction
  • Part Two: Campaign Theme, Goals & Objectives
  • Part Three: Campaign Message Profile
  • Part Four: Customer Engagement Plan
  • Part Five: Creative Concepts
  • Work Cited

Part One: Introduction

Overview

Have you heard of this “windscreen phenomenon” lately? We no longer notice as many insects on our windscreens during summer trips. Telegraph reports, wildlife experts have been warning about the alarming decline of insect populations. (1) Today, drivers everywhere spend less time scraping and scrubbing their windscreens. Entomologists call it the windshield phenomenon. “If you talk to people, they have a gut feeling. They remember how insects used to smash on your windscreen,” says Wolfgang Wägele, director of the Leibniz Institute for Animal Biodiversity in Bonn, Germany. (2) A 27 years long study has confirmed the global insect decline of 75%. (3) According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in recent years, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in honeybees and pollinator declines, in general, have become serious environmental concerns that could ultimately threaten the functioning of our natural ecosystems and affect the production of many important crops in the United States. (4) The causes of the CCD, according to the researchers, are multiple factors, such as global warming, pesticide use, habitat loss, and parasites. (5)

Problem

Why is it important? The most common bee controversy is the quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein, predicting that “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, man would have no more than four years to live” (6) Einstein was neither entomologist nor an expert in beekeeping, (6) So the buzz, surrounding the quote and to whom it may belong is highly speculative. However, the quote itself rings true of human interrelationship with the bees and other species of our planet. One of the persuasive connections is the bees keep our economy humming (5) According to the Natural Resource Defense Council report “Why We Need Bees: Nature’s Tiny Workers Put Food on Our Tables” over $15 billion a year in US crops pollinated by bees (apples, berries, cantaloupes, cucumbers, alfalfa, and almonds). (5) US Honey bees produce roughly $150 million in honey annually. The global economic cost of bee decline includes lower crop yields, increased production costs, estimating up to $5.7 billion per year. It is then becoming evident that keeping bee populations healthy and keeping them buzzing over our heads is critical to us and to our planet. (5)

Proposal

What can we do? Did you know that we actually have a National Honey Bee Awareness Day? This event started in 2009 by beekeepers of the United States to promote and educate the public about the bee industry. (7) This event is annually observed on the third Saturday in August. (7) National Humming Bee Campaign (NHBC) is a social marketing campaign with its main purpose to amplify the awareness humming bee issues as a part of the larger issue of the declining ecosystem. This campaign would celebrate the insect diversity beyond the National Honey Bee Day. In an attempt to create a movement, NHBC would promote mindful human behavior, help raise funding for the cause and contribute to ecosystem restoration.

Key Audience Profile

Audience type:

The target audience type is high school, college, university students and faculty, interested in environmental science, biology, zoology, entomology, beekeepers and beekeeper communities, along with the general audience, concerned with the results of the studies of insect populations and ecosystems decline.

Audience awareness:

What do they already know about the company? Many organizations exist to support regional and local bee populations. From Facebook search, it is evident that bees have many fans who are enthusiastic, informed and supportive of the cause. American Beekeeping Federation founded in 1943, has 27.5 thousand fans and is dedicated to supporting the future of the honey bees. The NW Honey Bee Habitat Restoration (3.7 thousand fans) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to saving honeybees through habitat restoration, bee removal, relocation, and public education. The Pollinator Partnership (44.5 thousand fans) Honey Love 501(c)3 non-profit conservation organization has 42.5 thousand fans.

What are their existing perceptions of the company itself, type of company, or industry? There is a lot of information on the science and research of bees and beekeeping, and the issues that cause the population decline. The overall general audience in the United States may be aware but not necessarily motivated enough to put the issue on the front-line, to make it a priority and create a movement. Not only the beekeeping industry would benefit from this unified voice but the global community as well. Amplifying the voice of this campaign across the nation is a virtuous and worthy cause.

Goals, needs, and motivations:

What motivates this person to be successful, make purchases, or engage with companies? Humans and bees share not only the economic aspect of human survival, in which case it only serves the human interests, but also the commonalities in genetic building blocks. (9) That is not to say that humans are big bees and bees are small humans. (9) The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that genes most closely associated with autism spectrum disorders in humans are found in the socially disinterested honey bees. (8) “…[T]here appears to be this kernel of similarity between us and honey bees, a common animal inheritance that potentially drives social behavior in similar ways,” said Michael Saul, a postdoctoral researcher who led the statistical analysis with statistics professor Sihai D. Zhao, University of Illinois. Considering this aspect, the needs and motivations should arise from continuous awareness to point that we share this planet with millions of other species and our survival depends on the survival of the ecosystem that we all are a part of.

Challenges and frustrations:

The main challenge of the currently existing organizations seem to be local and there is a definite lack of overarching, unified voice that would represent a stronger defense for this cause. Differences between the individual needs and interests of organizations may not align with this national campaign, but the cause for the campaign is its biggest motivation and its biggest challenge, therefore the interest of the population may be reduced. Elevating the issues and realigning the message should be the primary goal of this campaign, to the national and global status, to supersede private and individual interests for the benefit of the global community, thus, further promoting the awareness campaign.

Media usage and preferences:

Utilizing Google Trends analytics tool 5 search terms were compared. Honey Bee, Beekeeping, Pollinators, Colony Collapse Disease (CCD) over the period from Jan 2004 to present time. (10)

“Honey Bee,” “Beekeeping,” and “Colony Collapse Disease” search terms used to determine the subject interest by the general google search audience. The trend shows a large spike in the spring of 2011 when the concern for honey bee colonies affected by CCD was on the rise. Followed that spike, “Honey bee” search term over the years, but not the “beekeeping” search term, have been slowly rising, suggesting that perhaps the interest in “honey bees” is steadily increasing but not necessarily in “beekeeping” terms.

The sentiment towards honey bees is growing, thus justifying the effort of this campaign to raise awareness about the issues and promote honey bee research, increase beekeeping, contribute to the ecology conservation and many other causes that may be associated with the honey bee and the NHBC.

The audience may be interested in seeing positively charged posts and factual data, surveys, graphs, reflecting the status of the ecosystem and the honey bee populations. Generating online polls, questionnaires and surveys, memes, insightful posts, may be another way to engage the audience to participate and interact with the campaign.

Part Two: Campaign Theme, Goals & Objectives

Campaign Theme:

Happy, peaceful, nature-loving, National Humming Bee Campaign (NHBC) is aimed to increase awareness about honey bees and overall insect biomass trends. Particularly, NBAC is looking to unify the voice of the beekeeping communities and their stakeholders, promoting the importance of the health of the honey bees and diversity of the insects and the overall insect biomass populations to increase an overall positive attitude toward the health of the ecosystem.

Campaign Objective(s):

National Humming Bee Campaign (NHBC) objective is to promote awareness of honey bees, beekeeping, provide research in support of honey bee role as a part of the larger ecosystem in North America. Serve as an information delivery and research hub for all-things honey bee and related issues, uniting communities of the honey bee enthusiasts, researchers, educators, and serving the interests of the general audience.  Promote honey bee and honey beekeeping. Educate the public on honey bees, beekeeping and their role within the biomass of the insects and the ecosystem.

Call to action:

Make the everyday day a Humming Bee Day. Keep them humming. Bee the buzz. Be mindful of the bees and their important role in your life.

Part Three: Campaign Message Profile

A combination of earned owned and paid media outlets to promote the cause and build awareness would serve as a comprehensive campaign message profile. In order to generate audience participation and promote earned content, create a series of blog posts on the campaign’s main website. In addition to the blog, provide research articles, in-depth analysis, and white papers. Share this owned content through social media channels to generate earned content and promote audience participation in the campaign. Feature stories about local organizations on a regular basis, generate a calendar of events, requesting for information from the community, local enthusiasts, nonprofits and government agencies.

A hive for online shoppers may provide a good platform to sell marketing materials, such as yard signs, bumper stickers, window decals, T-shirts, hats, coffee/tea mugs. Soliciting for products that or sponsors to use the campaign’s branding on their products would further promote the campaign awareness attempt.

To align campaign ideas and themes, the following list of keywords/hashtags may serve as an example for campaign messaging strategies: #KeepEmHumming, #BeetheBuzz, #BuzzForHoneyBees, #BeeMindful, #Beehave, #BeeHappy, #BeeTheChange.

This campaign is an awareness campaign. In order to influence a change, a campaign must inform and educate its audience. To gather the information, the campaign must recruit content creators, writers, producers, graphic designers, appeal to the honey bee stakeholders and associations in order to feature their content on the campaign’s owned channels.

The final point of this campaign is for people to remember to be mindful of the bees, educate themselves on the importance of bees and insects and commit to reducing pollutants and reduce factors that negatively affect insect populations, honey bees in particular.

Part Four: Customer Engagement Plan

NHBC’s customer engagement plan should reflect natural patterns of bees and their behavior at a given timeframe.  It is beneficial to design a customer engagement plan using the bee’s natural schedule. Posts videos and other owned media related information for the specific time of the year. Even though their activity slows down during the winter season, bees are still at risk, so during winter months, it is possible that campaign activity reflects the issues of starvation, freezing, and other winter factors.

According to Omlet.US, an innovative company that designs products for pets, bees and other animals, the month of March mark the beginning of the beekeeping season. (11)  NHBC should generate owned media based on colony supplies of food, ways to protect bees from starvation, emergency feed practices, how to interpret bees activity and determine the beehive needs, and other relevant information. In April the topics for owned media should shift toward flowers and nectars as those become available, spring cleaning of the hive, frame replacement. (11) The recommended pattern is three seasonal periods, three monthly topics for the season, four prompts for each month, supported with the social media buzz (posts, tweets, Instagram posts) and conversation starters designed to reflect the seasonal topics.

The campaign messages should be pushed out in a periodic blitz to spark a conversation for each topic while building up the attention of the audience and preparing for a final culmination that ends as the celebration of the National Honey Bee Day Gala. The event should be sponsored and heavily promoted.

Each campaign communication must be recorded and analyzed by the tools available for campaign and determined by the campaign manager in order to improve communication and provide valuable feedback.

The success metrics include a comprehensive report (one per period) prepared by the campaign manager. This report must include a detailed analysis of the data collected over the periodic campaign communication. Data must be interpreted clearly and changes must be implemented as the new information is discovered.

Part Five: Creative Concepts

Work Cited:

1. 1. 1. S. Knapton, “The Windscreen Phenomenon – Why Your Car is No Longer Covered in Dead Insects,” 26 August 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/08/26/windscreen-phenomenon-car-no-longer-covered-dead-insects/. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      2. G. Vogel, “Where Have All the Insects Gone?,” Science Magazine, 10 May 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      3. C. A. Hallmann, M. Sorg, E. Jongehans, H. Siepel, N. Hofland, H. Shwan, W. Stenmans, A. Müller, H. Sumser, T. Hörren, D. Goulson and H. de Kroon, “More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas,” PLOS Journal, 18 October 2017. [Online]. Available: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809>. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      4. “Pollinator Protection Strategic Plan,” United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2008. [Online]. Available: https://www.epa.gov/pollinator-protection/pollinator-protection-strategic-plan. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      5. J. Saas, “Why We Need Bees: Nature’s Tiny Workers Put Food on Our Tables,” March 2011. [Online]. Available: https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/bees.pdf. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      6. “Did Albert Einstein Ever Link Doom of Human Race to Bees?,” Benefits of Honey, 2013. [Online]. Available: https://www.benefits-of-honey.com/albert-einstein.html<. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      7. “National Honey Bee Day 2018,” Awareness Days, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.awarenessdays.com/awareness-days-calendar/national-honey-bee-day-2018/. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      8. V. Highfield, “Humans and bees are more similar than you think,” Dennis Publishing Limited, August 2017. [Online]. Available: https://www.alphr.com/environment/1006494/humans-and-bees-are-more-similar-than-you-think. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      9. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “Study finds parallels between unresponsive honey bees, human autism,” Phys.org, July 2017. [Online]. Available: https://phys.org/news/2017-07-parallels-unresponsive-honey-bees-human.html. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      10. “Google Trends Compare Search Terms,” Google, 9 March 2019. [Online]. Available: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=honey%20bee,beekeeping,pollinators,Colony%20Collapse%20Disorder,Nosema. [Accessed 9 March 2019].
      11. “Bee Season,” Omlet, [Online]. Available: https://www.omlet.us/guide/bees/bee_season [Accessed 9 March 2019].