And that prompted concern that Cheerios’ campaign was encouraging people to plant potentially invasive flower seeds all over North America. The social media side-eye with the most staying power would seem to be aimed at Cheerios’ choice of wildflower seeds to distribute: a “bee feed mix” blended and sold by the Toronto-based Veseys Seed Company that contains 20 different species of wildflowers, most of them native to the Eastern U.S. They work on conservation of 57 species of bee native to North America, but not honeybees. It’s worth noting that the conglomerate has teamed up with the invertebrate conservation organization The Xerces Society to restore as much as 100,000 acres of pollinator habitat in the U.S., and Xerces doesn't work on honeybee issues. A few screens down on Cheerios’ #bringbackthebees website, the company repeatedly uses the phrase “bees and other pollinators,” and the larger campaign across General Mills’ spectrum of brands doesn’t single out honeybees at all. (Glyphosate has not, as one commenter debunked by Snopes would have it, been linked to honeybee declines.)īut that criticism was largely an artifact of Cheerios’ messaging, which focused on the brand’s mascot “Buzz” to the exclusion of native pollinators such as bumblebees. Some on social media suggested that the campaign was intended to distract the public from recent studies showing that samples of Cheerios were found to contain detectable amounts of the herbicide glyphosate, which has been indirectly linked to declines in populations of pollinators such as the Monarch butterfly.
Some are slamming the company's efforts, and even calling the seed giveaway an ecological disaster. By March 20, according to a map on their site, Cheerios’ bee campaign had distributed seeds through the 48 contiguous states, with especially heavy distribution east of the Mississippi River.īut not everyone reacted to Cheerios’ campaign by rushing to their website to get wildflower seeds. The success of the seed campaign probably reflected both the concern members of the general public may have over honeybee declines - with North American populations dropping by almost 45 percent between April 2015 and March 2016 - and the enthusiasm members of the public generally have for getting free stuff. The campaign, hashtagged #bringbackthebees, also included a pledge by Cheerios to pay its suppliers to grow 3,300 acres of bee-friendly wildflowers on their 60,000 acres of oat farms, which itself is part of a corporate-wide campaign across many of General Mills’ brands to promote pollinator health.
The successful campaign capped off a promotion in which Cheerios’ trademarked bee mascot Buzz “ disappeared” from the company’s advertising, represented only in silhouette. By the time they ended their campaign after seven days, Cheerios had reached that goal 15 times over, having sent out packets containing 1.5 billion wildflower seeds. In March 2017, the marketing team for General Mills’ breakfast cereal Honey Nut Cheerios set itself an ambitious goal: to distribute 100 million wildflower seeds to its customers in an effort to boost declining honeybee populations. Despite what you might read on Twitter, this is not necessarily an ecological disaster area.
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