Sweden – To celebrate World Bee Day, a number of McDonald’s restaurants in Sweden have replaced their regular billboards with signs that double as beehives.
A number of McDonald’s franchises in Sweden already host beehives on their restaurant rooftops, but the converted billboards extend the initiative to include wild bees. The boards are permanent wood installations with drilled holes that are designed to attract bees. All McDonald’s franchises are invited to order their own bee hotel boards and customise the messaging.
Working with creative agency Nord DDB, McDonald’s has also started a collaboration with advertising giant JC Decaux to create habitats for wild bees on the back of billboards that would otherwise not be used. As bees are most comfortable if their nests are in a south-facing position, six large bee hotels have been mounted on the back of north-facing billboards in Järfälla outside Stockholm, with hopes of scaling up the initiative in 2020.
As we explore in our Civic Ads microtrend, businesses today are considering the potential that advertising space has to benefit society as a whole.
