How Ben & Jerry’s has found the balance between activism and advertising

A decade ago, e-commerce marketing was burgeoning. To manage that type of marketing, ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s looked to its online social activism work to inform the company on how to pivot.

“All of the activism media buying we had done [online at the time] was all about acquisition where you’re buying cost per acquisition versus reach,” explained Jay Curley, Ben & Jerry’s global head of integrated marketing. “Everything we learned from that in terms of creative best practices, targeting best practices and what not, we were doing in activism first. We then were able to — because of the frozen food supply chain we were one of the last industries to be disrupted [by e-commerce] — take the learnings that we had and almost have a head start on the e-commerce media.”

Activism has been a core part of the Ben & Jerry’s brand since the beginning. While it initially relied on word of mouth to grow rather than traditional advertising channels, the brand has leaned heavily into social media over the last decade, per Curley. In doing so, the company’s in-house team as well as external agencies — the company takes a hybrid approach to its marketing and advertising efforts — have figured out how to balance more traditional brand advertising efforts with social activism.

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