Impact Hollow.Com

 

 

by Charlie Crowell

 

When it comes to cause related marketing, nobody does it better then Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The two leftover hippy ice cream makers from the 60’s have pulled off some incredibly potent “save the planet” public relations trickery.

 

 

One of their best was the introduction of the ice cream flavor Rainforest Crunch. Here’s how the scam worked.

 

Ben and Jerry love the planet, right? They love it so much that they want to save it and they hear a lot of trees are being cut down in the Amazon basin. Some of these trees are Brazil nut trees. Brazil nuts are edible. If Ben and Jerry put Brazil nuts in their ice cream, the people cutting down the trees will realize the trees are worth more alive than dead. They won’t cut the trees down, they’ll make money and the earth will be saved.

 

And it gets better. Ben and Jerry will set up Brazil nut co-operatives and buy directly from them insuring the people “in the field” benefit.

 

 

 

Thus Rainforest Crunch was born… and consumers who bought the new flavor could feel good about their ever expanding waistline. They will feel good when they read all about how they are saving the world for surely it’s true. It says it right on the little high priced pint container.

 

With the release of the nut laden flavor, Ben and Jerry made the morning talk show circuit. Newspapers and magazines clamor for interviews. The amount of free media coverage was obscene. They were described as “caring capitalist” and “business owners with a social conscience.” It was all embarrassingly gushy.

 

Now fast forward a few years. By 1995, the word was out that Ben and Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch ice cream was, in fact, being made with nuts from the usual Brazilian agribusinesses and not from any newly started nut cooperative that were going stop deforestation.

 

Translation – everyone who thought they were saving the rainforest by making an eco-friendly purchase from Ben and Jerry were shafted pretty well and NOT A SINGLE TREE WAS EVER SAVED!

 

Nuts!

 

Add to all this, consumers didn’t like the ice cream. Imagine, people refusing to pay top dollar for a pint of ice cream they didn’t like - even though it was supposedly saving the rainforest. The flavor ended up in the company’s graveyard of failed flavors… really.

 

 

 

All this proves results don’t matter in cause related marketing. It’s the warm fuzzy feeling you get that counts… along with the free media exposure.

 

Ben and Jerry have a long history of pulling this nonsense off. It seems to work every time. They would donate “1% of their profits for peace” and encouraged other businesses to join in. A lot of businesses actually signed on. My question is – who did they give the money to? How effectively was the money spent? Someone suggested they give the money to the U.S. military because at the time, they were keeping the peace pretty well.

 

 

Another goodie was that some of Ben and Jerry’s inner city scoop shops were going to employ only homeless persons. Ah, if it was only that simple. First, it’s a myth that all a homeless person needs to succeed is a job. Secondly, I really don’t want some homeless guy scooping my ice cream. But the press coverage following the announcement was again, overwhelming.

 

There have been plenty of Ben and Jerry social missions but I never seem to hear any favorable results. Like all marketing campaigns, they just seem to fade away. I guess you can’t really save the world one scoop at a time.

 

It’s interesting to note that Ben and Jerry have never attempted to tackle the obesity problem. Hmm? And with 1200 calories in a little pint, I suppose they never will.

 

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