Case Study
Startup & PRODUCT PR

Tiny bug, huge impact! How we help SENS convincing Germans to eat insects. 🦗

SENS produces protein and energy bars with cricket flour. Yummy!

Client

SENS
sensbar.com

prOJECT date

April 2018 - November 2018

Services

Startup PR
Product PR

The brief

“I don’t fear bugs – I eat them” - that’s the message SENS wanted to spread when the startup approached us in April 2018. While 2 billion people eat insects as a part of their daily diet, most westerners have not tried them yet. Despite the many health and ecological benefits, the topic of insect-eating was facing a big challenge: The “Yuck” factor.

Therefore SENS asked us to help them to overcome the cultural fear of eating insects and to establish their protein and energy bars in the German market.

So for us the question was: How can we make eating insects the new normal?

The campaign

We chose to do a combined strategy to dispell common prejudices against eating insects. We sent out product samples for their energy bars, orchestrated media tours with SENS co-founder Radek Husek and produced informational content about the health, sport nutritional and environmental benefits of insect protein where we talked in-depth about common questions like “Does it taste weird?” or “Will I bite on feelers and legs?”. (Spoiler: Cricket flour is neutral in taste, but is a real superfood. Many insects contain significant amounts of healthy fats. They are also rich in calcium, zinc, and heme iron, a type of iron superior to that coming from plants. On top no antibiotics are used when farming crickets, less feed is needed to produce the same amount of protein compared to livestock and fewer greenhouse gases are emitted. And the best: The crickets probably even enjoy their life as they are used to living in dense populations.)

But we didn't stop there. We also organized visits for journalists to “The Cricket Lab”, the worldwide biggest fully automated cricket farm from SENS co-founder Radek Husek who some might already call “The Cricket Whisperer”.

And the journey to make eating insects a commodity continues: In an ongoing campaign we are currently working to let the world know about the future of (vertical) farming, the advantages of insects for gut health and pet food alike as well as we are starting an influencer outreach to sport, travel and food influencers.

PS: We also created Christmas cookie recipes made with cricket flour! 🍪 ❤️ 🦗