How Ben & Jerry’s showed that creativity can beat powerful
“Fearless play”, argues executive creative director and partner of The Hallway, Simon Lee, is vital in the face of adversity.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield had every right to be fearful in 1984. At a meeting in a dark corner of an airport restaurant, their distributor told them the Pillsbury Corporation had bought Haagen-Daz and was threatening to stop selling him Haagen-Daz if he continued to sell Ben & Jerry’s. Haagen-Daz was the distributor’s main money maker, so he had no choice but to cut off Ben & Jerry’s core distribution pipeline.
The partners consulted a lawyer who confirmed that under federal antitrust law, the incident qualified as a restraint of trade. But as a new startup facing off against a company worth over US$4 billion, this was a legal battle they couldn’t win.
What Cohen and Greenfield did next has become the stuff of business legend. They responded with a cheeky grassroots campaign with the headline ‘What’s the Doughboy afraid of?’. They printed ads on their ice cream containers asking for their loyal customers’ support. And if a customer sent in $10 they received a bumper sticker and a t-shirt with the campaign line on the front and ‘Ben & Jerry’s Legal Defense Fund: Major Contributor’ on the back.
