11-30: $29.53
12-1: $30.27
12-2: $30.69
Average: $30.16

((30.16 – 27.25)/27.25) * 100 = 10.68%

One way Ben and Jerry’s has used technology for their company was by teaming up with Greenpeace to “bring climate friendly freezers to the United States.” A good amount of refrigerators today use harmful fluorinated gases, Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC’s), but these new freezers use Hydrocarbons as a refrigerant. “Nearly one-fifth of the cumulative global warming pollution in our atmosphere is F-gases; chemicals commonly used in refrigeration and cooling units.” Greenpeace has impacted Asia and Europe as well by introducing these freezers, and now they will be able to penetrate the American market. These green freezers will cause no harmful pollution, and using them seems to be right up Ben and Jerry’s “alley.” Ben and Jerry’s has advertised their new freezer, so this more than likely improved their image, gave their customers more reason to trust their products, and improved customer loyalty. “This climate-safe freezer will keep pints of Chunky Monkey and Cherry Garcia as cold as ever, but it’s also going to help cool our planet,” said John Passacantando, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA (www.Greenpeace.org).

In May of 2009, Ben and Jerry’s selected a modern cash register called the MICROS e7 Restaurant Point-of-Sale System. It is basically a touch-screen computer system that works like a cash register. Ben and Jerry’s selected the MICROS e7 for its stores because “of its core functionality and its simplified support and installation process.” This little machine is also “green,” of course. Ben and Jerry’s was “impressed with the sustainability and low carbon footprint.” It is disk-less and does not use a fan to regulate heat, so it requires only half the energy compared to a regular electronic cash register. Over the next 18 months starting this past May, the MICROS e7 is being shipped to all Ben and Jerry’s stores across America and Canada (www.Reuters.com).

Another spin to the technology issue is that, in some ways, Ben and Jerry’s don’t use technology to improve their company. An example: Ben and Jerry’s don’t use cows injected with hormones. Particularly, Ben and Jerry’s opposes Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (RBGH). This hormone has been genetically engineered to increase milk production in cows, but causes health risks to these cows. Farmers that provide milk to Ben and Jerry’s must sign a pledge opposing RBGH. I applaud Ben and Jerry’s for not using this drug on their cows. This shows that the ice cream company does not use all the possible updated technology, but this is not necessarily a bad thing (www.Benjerry.com).

Ben and Jerry’s is one of the top-selling ice cream companies in the world, and the use of technology is an issue they must consider. Ben and Jerry’s has used technology for a whole range of things from freezers to cash registers to not using technology, such as hormones. In whatever way Ben and Jerry’s chooses to use available technology, they seem to choose technology that helps the environment and keeps the ingredients to their ice cream as safe as possible.

In 2002, Ben and Jerry’s paired up with the Dave Matthews Band. This band’s music is melodic and down-to-earth, which fits perfectly with the “hippies” who love Ben and Jerry’s. Ben and Jerry’s and the Dave Matthews Band allied themselves with SaveOurEnvironment.org “to help slow global warming.” Ben and Jerry’s created a new ice cream flavor called, “One Sweet Whirled,” which is a spin-off of the Dave Matthews Band’s song, “One Sweet World.” This is an example of Ben and Jerry’s using demographics to sell their product and use their influence to help the world. This campaign appealed to people who were fans of the Dave Matthews Band, which was a good move on Ben and Jerry’s part because the band is known world-wide and they have millions of fans. The new ice cream flavor most likely increased sales for Ben and Jerry, but the company also affected the world because they promoted SaveOurEnvirment.org (http://www.benjerry.com/company/media-center/press/press040302osw.html).

“Ben and Jerry’s mission has long been called ‘Peace Love and Ice Cream.’” Another way the company has promoted this view on the company was on Peace Day, September 21, 2008. The ice cream company launched a new flavor, “Imagine Whirled Peace” to coincide with Peace Day. They set-up a website where people uploaded “messages of peace” and relevant photos. Since this campaign was mainly on the internet it appealed to a younger crowd since the youth of today are absorbed with computers. One of the goals of this project was “to reach out to young consumers” because “we’re constantly learning about staying relevant to younger audiences,” said the Ben and Jerry’s internet marketing manager, Katie O’Brien (http://social-media-optimization.com/2008/08/ben-jerrys-tests-social-media/).

Chocolate Peace-Sign Chunks

Ben and Jerry’s is also spreading to other countries, particularly Australia. In September of 2009, Ben and Jerry’s is opening a store in Sydney, Australia. “Australians are the third biggest eater of ice cream in the world, and one-third of people in the 18-34 year old bracket have heard of [Ben and Jerry’s],” so this is a good idea to move to Australia. Ben and Jerry’s is targeting a younger demographic and will be using Facebook and Twitter for marketing. Social media sites are a key factor to appeal to a younger demographic, so it is smart for Ben and Jerry’s to use these tools for their company (http://www.everyfranchise.com/articles/ice-cream-chain-ben-and-jerrys-comes-to-australia-with-franchising-plan-366.htm).

Overall, it seems Ben and Jerry’s demographic are young people and liberal people, which sometimes coincide. Ben and Jerry’s promotes world peace and protecting the planet, and young people care about these issues because they are very relevant in today’s society. It seems that Ben and Jerry’s have been successful with this ordeal because they are incredibly into activism and rallying people up for various causes. People appreciate a company that isn’t full devoted to making money and want to do something positive with their power and money.

Serving the world's largest baked alaska at the Capitol

In 2005, the U.S. Senate voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development. In response, Ben and Jerry’s crated the largest Baked Alaska dessert that was over 600 pounds. They paraded in front of the U.S. Capitol with the dessert to make their point. Ben and Jerry’s employees, Greenpeace, the Alaska Wilderness League, and over 1,000 people attended the event. Throughout the country Ben and Jerry’s shops offered a Baked Alaska Sundae and advertised Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) signs in the shops. The whole campaign was eventually successful; Congress ended up not authorizing drilling in Alaska (www.benjerry.com).
Same-sex marriage became legal in the state of Vermont on September 1, 2009. Ben and Jerry decided to celebrate the day because they were allied with Freedom to Marry. To rejoice over the legal matter, Ben and Jerry’s sold “Hubby Hubby” sundaes during the month of September, which was a spin-off of one of their ice creams named Chubby Hubby. They even released a mock label for Hubby Hubby for the pint sized ice cream containers, but it takes 18 months to revise a product label,” so that obviously would not allow enough time to celebrate gay marriage in Vermont (www.slashfood.com).

The mock ice cream pint label

All of these advertising campaigns are unique in their own way, and some of them have had an effect on the politics they addressed. Drilling for oil in Alaska was dropped and Congress extended a contract from the small farming campaign. Ben and Jerry’s have grown to be a huge company that obviously has political influence in the world. They aren’t corrupt about it, though. They are using their influence for the better.

Ben and Jerry’s follows its mission statement, and others have noticed it. The company made Fortune magazine’s Best Companies for Minorities in 1993, Business Ethics magazine ranked the company 3rd out of 100 for its socially conscious practices in 1996, it was ranked in the top 100 companies for working mother by Working Mother magazine through 1994-1996, and the co-founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, received the 1999 National Retail Federation’s American Spirit Award for their “social responsibility,”(leda.law.harvard.edu).

What exactly does Ben and Jerry’s do to achieve such a high ethical status? For starters Ben Cohen found The Foundation in 1985, and its purpose is to “make the world a better place by … eliminating the underlying causes of environmental and social problems,”(leda.law.harvard.edu). The company gives 7.5 percent of its pretax profits to this foundation compared to the average American corporation who gives a measly 1 percent to charity. Ben and Jerry’s also helps out its employees in different ways. The Joy Gang visits bimonthly to shake up the average workday by giving massages, pizza parties, and awarding gag gifts (glow in the dark religious statutes). Employees also receive three free pints of ice cream per day work along with discounts on merchandise and many benefits such as, maternity leave with full pay for six weeks after delivery and 60% of regular wages for up to six months, health insurance, life insurance, dental insurance, and each new adoptive parent receives four weeks of full pay if s/he is the primary care-giver, two weeks worth of regular pay otherwise. The company is aware of the environment as well. In 2001, they began selling their Vanilla flavor in unbleached cardboard containers to reduce water pollution from bleach. Ben and Jerry’s became the first public entity to join Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, which was created in response to the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. CERES advocates corporate environmental responsibility, and Ben and Jerry’s must submit a rigorous environmental report every year to CERES. Also there is a Green Team in Ben and Jerry’s that finds conservation opportunities for the company’s employees.

I wonder why this flavor died?

However, Ben and Jerry’s is not a perfect company. It has proven to make ill-fated decisions. In the early 1990’s Ben and Jerry’s created a new flavor: Rainforest Crunch. The nuts in this ice cream were harvested and sold by Amazonians. Although this seemed like a good idea because the natives could sell the nuts to make profit, it turned out to be a disaster. The Amazonians could not keep up with the amount of nuts needed to meet the demand of Ben and Jerry’s. The company ended up buying 95% of the nuts from corrupt producers convicted of killing labor organizers. The price of these nuts dropped so drastically that the Amazonians were forced to sell their land to be cut down in order to make enough money to survive.

Ben and Jerry’s was known to cap its CEO salary to employee salary ratio seven to one, but the cap was removed in 1994. Also in 1994, Ben Cohen stepped down from being the CEO of Ben and Jerry’s. The company hosted a contest “Yo! I want to be a CEO” where a participant wrote a 100 word poem, and the winner became the CEO. However, Ben and Jerry’s offered the position to Russell Reynolds during the contest, so the contest was just a publicity stunt that wasn’t real. Finally in the early 1990’s, technicians would clean ice cream maker machines with hot water every day after the factory closed down. In an effort for Ben and Jerry’s to be socially responsible, they offered the diluted ice cream water to local pig farmers instead of washing it down the drain. The pigs ended up dying after reaching 200 pounds instead reaching the average 600 pounds. Ben and Jerry’s covered up the incident by deleting a reference to the event and the social auditor was forbidden to speak on what had happened (leda.law.harvard.edu).

Overall I believe Ben and Jerry’s is a good company. It seems that some of their decisions have gone sour, and it was out of their control on whether or not their ideas work. At least the company advertises its mission to the public to be ethically responsible, so hopefully their message rubs off on America and the world.

Although Ben and Jerry’s versus Haagen Dazs is a big rivalry, these two companies are controlled by Nestle and the conglomerate Unilever. They are behind half the ice cream sales in the United States and control more the one third of the market globally. This is a growing business too, global ice cream sales are rising by “2.5% and will hit $65 billion in 2010,” (www.businessweek.com). Nestle and Unilever have grown a lot this past decade. General Mills owns Haagen Dazs, but Nestle obtained rights to sell the brand in the United States in 2001, and Nestle bought Dreyers in 2002. Unilever had its fair share as well when it bought Ben and Jerry’s in 2000 and Breyers Ice Cream. “Today, Nestle boasts a 17.5% share of the world market, while Unilever is a close behind with 16%,” (www.businessweek.com). These companies are competing with each other, and it’s a neck-and-neck race according to their stock prices over the course of the year. Both companies have maintained their stock price compared to a year ago even when they both dipped around March and April of 2009
(Unilever Stock Price for the Past Year) (Nestle Stock Price for the Past Year).

Ben and Jerry’s is devoted to helping the world and each year they release a Social and Environmental Assessment Report (SEAR). This report discusses what the company has done throughout the year to benefit society. For example, Ben and Jerry’s had three main goals for the year of 2008: “To use [their] company to further the cause of peace and justice, harmonize [their] global supply chain and ensure its alignment with [their] values, and take the lead promoting global sustainable dairy practices,” (Benjerry.com).

To promote peace and justice in 2008, one of the things Ben and Jerry’s achieved was to introduce a Fair Trade certified ice cream, Chocoloate Macadamia, globally. Fair trade “means the farmers who grew the vanilla and cocoa for [Ben and Jerry's] received a fair price for their harvest and used environmentally sound techniques to grow and harvest their crops,” (Benjerry.com). Jerry speaks on this issue:

Overall I like Ben and Jerry’s as a company because of its mission statement. This company wants to be a successful business, but it shares the wealth it has gained with the world. I look forward to analyzing the different aspects of this company because I am sure I will deepen my knowledge of all the good this company has achieved.