It seems Ben and Jerry’s may be next in the firing line after they made waves with a provocative 4th of July tweet claiming the US is on stolen Indigenous land. Could we witness a downturn similar to Bud Light?
Or is their irresistibly good ice cream strong enough to keep their ship afloat?
Edit: Side note - in the absence of B&J, what ice cream are you turning to? I’m in AUS. So B&J was a game changer. Not anything else like it that I’m aware of.
How does this help sell more ice cream?
Will B&J become the next Bud Light? Yes, someday.
"People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe.” - Simon Sinek
Marketing has very little to do with the product being marketed. Apple sells the same phones everyone else does. People will pay 5x more for an iPhone because of the marketing and image. Not because they’re actually 5x better.
It’s a privately owned company and they have always bundled promoting progressive issues with their business because that’s their values. It says it right on the ice cream packaged that they are hippies from Vermont.
They are trying to sell ideology. Like Starbucks selling “free trade coffee” or companies incorporating the pride flag into their logo. You don’t just buy physical products anymore.
They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work.
How so?
People will get tired of the ideology pushing. All people want from B&J is ice cream not ideology.
I’d actually argue the opposite. Less and less people care about the actual product and the more and more people are buying ideology.
The next logical step is to abstract away the physical product and simply sell the ideology.
“I’d like some coffee with no sugar please”
“I’m sorry sir, we are out of coffee with no sugar. We only have coffee with no milk. May I suggest the diner across the street?”
Yeh. So if they push ideology, some other alternative will take its spot in the market.
Any other good cookie dough dice creams around?