Bee Hotel

The global bee population is declining. Silk, Danone’s plant-based brand, has long-standing sustainable behaviours, and we know the more we help bees, the more they help us. 

We wanted to be distinctive in the marketplace by putting words into action and doing something to help, while also supporting biodiversity.

With Danone’s plant-based food brand, Silk, our problem is the wave of new brands and products flooding the market, making hollow claims about their commitment to the environment and their attempts to quickly win over consumers, without necessarily putting in the work. 

We needed a way to show consumers on the lookout for environmentally conscious brands that Silk was putting its money where its mouth was and looking for ways to support the environment wherever it could.  

As a plant-based brand, we were more than aware of how important bees are to not just the production of our products, but the sustained health of the global eco-system. Both wild and domestic bees perform about 80% of all pollination worldwide and a single bee colony can pollinate 300 million flowers each day. This makes the global decline in the bee population all the more concerning.

Bees need somewhere safe to lay eggs and produce their offspring, but due to factors such as parasites, disease, pesticides, and the lack of floral diversity, available spaces are decreasing.  

When considering the physical spaces advertising occupies, Silk saw an opportunity to use OOH billboards for the benefit of both biodiversity and their brand.  

While billboards themselves are used for advertising messaging, the support pole that holds the billboard in place is not fully utilised. Thus, an empty space that can be used for other purposes. 

Introducing Bee Hotel.

Silk installed Bee Hotels on OOH billboard support columns to create spaces for bees to reproduce – a first of its kind, and a crucial assist for bees in the ever-creeping urban environment they find themselves living in.

Bringing credibility to this idea, we worked closely with entomology professors from the Université de Montreal who were able to study the impact our Bee Hotels had on bees, and ensure they were promoting biodiversity.  

Instead of consulting footfall traffic statistics, we let the professors choose our billboard locations to make certain they were accessible for their team of scientists to document the program and its impact on the bees.

This re-purposing of traditional OOH boards for Bee Hotels would transform an advertising vehicle into something that helps the environment. 

Once locations were identified that allowed the research team to access them, the Bee Hotels were constructed by a local manufacturer.

The entomologists had final approval on the design and production of the hotels, making sure everything followed the best scientific protocol.

Native flowers were planted at the base of the OOH billboard columns and were specifically chosen as they attract bees to the area, encouraging them to ‘check into’ our hotels. 

Once the Bee Hotels and flowers were installed, our OOH messaging was used to showcase Silk’s products and make a nod to the bee-friendly initiative. 

The Bee Hotel OOH campaign began with select locations chosen by the entomology professors. We supported the campaign with social and PR initiatives to spread further awareness of Silk’s commitment to the biodiversity of bees.