What can a company do to make sustainability more accessible for families and children?
Implementing sustainability (practises) into a business has increasingly become essential for family brands. They feel a social responsibility towards their target group to operate in an environmentally friendly way and to implement sustainability into their own business. Sustainability has become an important topic for children; however, they are often not yet able to act/behave accordingly. Experts talk about a value-action-gap when there is a significant difference between someone’s own values and their behaviour. Therefore, it is important to understand future generations and make it as simple as possible for them to act in an environmentally friendly way.
Case study: project “Klatschmohnwiese” (red poppy meadow) by Maya the Bee
The entertainment company Studio 100 Media (https://www.studio100group.com/) has been empowering children, families and licensees through/with project “Klatschmohnwiese” to make a difference / to make an environmental impact since 2018. Griffiths Consulting is supporting Studio 100 Media with strategic implementations and communication measures to inform families and children about insect conservation, biodiversity and acting sustainably.
For its commitment, Studio 100 Media even won the special prize “Sustainability in Licensing 2021” at the Licensing International (Germany) Awards.
In the environmental education initiative Project Klatschmohnwiese, Studio 100 Media uses Maya the Bee and her friends as brand ambassadors for insect protection. The project has three main goals:
– to inform the public about how to protect insects, biodiversity and sustainable interaction with nature;
– to draw attention to the topic and
– to motivate children, families and licensees to actively play a part in insect protection.
Griffiths Consulting supports the cause with the creation of concepts, communication measures, website planning and -design.
Communications campaign and support for licensees
In cooperation with Studio 100 Media we designed a family-friendly website, www.diebienemaja-bienenschutz.de, for this project. We are also responsible for the written content and programmed it. Maintenance and continuously filling it with new/relevant material is part of the ongoing work we do. On the website, children and families can learn about how to protect insects and get inspired how they can help and do something good themselves.
Licensees of the brand Maya the Bee can work together with Studio 100 Media and commit to sustainable engagement. With the international style guide, the “Eco Trend Book“, licensees learn more about environmentally friendly and sustainable production of design, packaging and material with special CGI Maya artwork.
We generate attention for the Project “Klatschmohnwiese” by positioning it in family friendly media. Additionally, we also contacted journalists with an interest in sustainability or gardening topics and sent them relevant press material. To compliment editorial coverage of Maya’s heartfelt project, we organised advertorials and competitions in family media, as well as influencer cooperations on Instagram, Facebook and blogs. Furthermore, we fill the famous Bee’s own social media channels with content. Studio 100 Media also uses its own pay-TV channel and the app “The world of Maya the Bee” to actively inform about insect conservation.
Cooperation with biodiversity experts
For insect-specific know-how, Studio 100 Media cooperates with Naturschutzbund Deutschland e. V. (NABU) as part of the project. They support NABU, amongst other things, throughout the insect summer with communication measures and donations to the NABU insect protection fund.
International communication: steer centrally and use local know how
Germany is not the only country where Project “Klatschmohnwiese” takes place: In Poland it started under the Polish name Projekt Makowa Łąka with its own website, https://www.pszczolkamaja-ochronaowadow.pl/. We support our partner agency in Poland, Personal PR from our international PR network (the IPR Team), with strategic planning as well as OTOP, a Polish society for species protection, which is working on the Makowa Łąka project. In 2021 Studio 100 Media was able to launch an insect summer in Poland for the very first time. It consisted of a kindergarten event and various communication measures.
