General Mills Canada has taken Buzz, their mascot, off the Honey Nut Cheerios Box in hopes of bringing attention to declining bee populations. This campaign, along with a heartfelt video about helping animals in need, asks Canadians to help plant over 35 million wildflowers to help the bees.

This may be blatant CSR but the brand alignment and simplicity of the campaign provides an authentic feel and I genuinely hope to see this campaign succeed.

This powerful video combined with taking Buzz, their bee mascot, off the box, can prompt children and parents alike to seek more information. Hopefully this will promote consumers themselves to take actions to help support the bee population.

Where’s Buzz?

I am hopeful that this campaign signals not just the planting of wild flowers, but an organized effort to reduce/discontinue the use of pesticides in General Mills’ supply chain. It would seem like a logical place to go given the effect pesticides are proven to have on bee populations and General Mills is in an incredible place of influence. Imagine if all the cereal products they sold were made without the use of pesticides! That would put a significant amount of pressure on both farmers to be pesticide free, and other cereal companies to consider moving in the same direction in order to retain competitive edge.

This is just a possibility, there have been no promises of this nature, but the faint glimmer of possibility gives me hope.