Baby blue probably isn’t a color most shoppers expect to see in the honey aisle at their local supermarket.
But that dissonance is exactly why Barkman Honey chose that color for its newly rebranded Busy Bee Raw Honey packaging, which first hit stores in September.
Honey manufacturers (including, previously, Busy Bee Honey) tend to rely on yellow and golden hues that resemble the actual product, said Jessica Cummings, Marketing and Communications Director at Barkman Honey. The color blue, on the other hand, contrasts with gold in a complementary way, she said, helping Busy Bee stand out from its competition.
Light blue also evokes clear, open skies, which dovetails nicely with the other cornerstone of Busy Bee’s rebrand: tracking the bees themselves.
Peeling back the label on the new packaging now reveals details about when the honey was made, where the beehives were located and what types of plants the bees sourced their pollen from.
Consumers increasingly want to know where their food comes from, said Cummings – and that’s particularly true with honey, which is one of the most commonly faked commodities in the global food market.
Selling Bees
Beyond food transparency issues, Barkman Honey has to be careful about how it markets its honey brands so they don’t end up competing against each other.
Barkman is most focused on two of its brands right now, said Cummings: Busy Bee, which is a more quintessential product (complete with bear-shaped bottles and everything), and Bee Harmony, which is known for premium, higher-quality flavored batches.
Both are available at big-box retailers like Walmart and Target, but the latter can also be found in more upscale, health-conscious stores like Whole Foods, as well as directly through the brand’s own website. (Honey is a great product for ecommerce, said Cummings, because it’s shelf-stable and inspires a lot of passion among aficionados.)
But it’s been a full-court press for Busy Bee due to the rebrand. Along with the new packaging, Cummings’ team devised a new media plan, which will run through the holiday season and well into 2026.
The timing is purposeful, Cummings said. Colder weather usually means more team, sore throats and holiday baking, all of which lead to a boost in honey sales.
Barkman uses agency partners for the larger strategy and has an internal brand management team for tackling day-to-day responsibilities. The brand tapped creative agency nice&frank for the assets and is working with Dentsu for PR support, as well as measurement and reporting capabilities.
“I want the best people working on our high-profile activities, and I [also] want to really leverage the expertise of people that do it every day,” said Cummings. “We work with a number of creative and digital partners to help bring things to life.”
Streaming Bees
Busy Bee spends across channels, including CTV, which Barkman first experimented with during a 2018 campaign for Bee Harmony. In general, Barkman’s marketing tends to be more flighted (pun not intended) than always-on, with a focus on metrics like impressions, viewer completion rates, site traffic and, of course, sales.
Email clickthrough rate is also an important metric for Bee Harmony, in particular, said Cummings, because it’s a sign of interest and engagement. The brand produces a “Beesponsible” newsletter to educate readers about bees, their impact on the environment and what readers can do to help declining North American populations.
Speaking of, Barkman also partners with ecologically minded content creators as part of its social media strategy, mainly mid-tier Instagram creators who post about food, wellness and environmental issues.
Barkman steers clear of bee rescuer influencers, though, preferring to keep its relationship with the hundreds of beekeepers it sources honey from focused on production, not promotion. (Fortunately, this strategy seems to have saved the brand from a lot of the #BeeTok drama!)
Instead, Busy Bee Honey makes its own original bee content via the “Live Hive,” a YouTube channel that livestreams a local bee colony just outside of Barkman’s offices in Hillsboro, Kansas. The “Live Hive” is just one of the many new things Barkman is trying as part of the Busy Bee rebrand, said Cummings, with a focus on the “power of storytelling.”
“We have a great story with Busy Bee Raw and its traceability,” she said, “and we want to keep evolving that.”
