Ben & Jerry’s boasts some of the best ice-cream flavours that currently grace our supermarket shelves, but as if that wasn’t reason enough to get people talking about them, they’re also currently embroiled in a minor political scandal.
The company’s CEO, David Stever, is being ousted by Ben & Jerry’s parent company, Unilever, amid ongoing corporate hostility over Ben & Jerry’s political activism.
Political consciousness has been imbued in the brand since its inception, but it returned to the forefront in 2021, when Ben & Jerry’s stopped the sale of its products in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
More recently, this escalated when Ben & Jerry’s expressed support for Palestinian refugees and a ceasefire in Gaza – and when they stated that Unilever tried to prevent the brand from publicly criticising Donald Trump. Ben & Jerry’s filed a court case against Unilever for its “efforts to silence the social mission,” alleging that Unilever violated an agreement, made when it first acquired Ben & Jerry’s, that the ice-cream brand’s hallmark social activism would be protected by an independent board.
The political allegiance of an ice-cream brand might sound trivial, but it is anything but. This is indicative of a bigger trend: a growing consumer culture that seeks out products not just for their material value, but for what they represent – and what that says about the person making the purchase. Brands pander to this, of course, but consumers can, and do, lose interest if they feel that a brand’s social activism is half-hearted.
Take Starbucks, with its forays into seemingly universal, non-divisive forms of activism like environmental sustainability. Such activism falters when faced with more divisive issues, as is evident in widespread consumer boycotts of Starbucks after it sued its workers’ union for pro-Palestine messaging.
Increasingly, because of targeted consumer boycotts like the BDS movement, or individual brand messaging, or customers’ moral dilemmas, companies are gaining and losing sales on the basis of social justice.
Ben & Jerry’s is one of the few brands that has consistently maintained, and delivered on, specific activist promises, whether through its ice cream flavours for charity or its pushback against the Unilever agenda.
It’s no coincidence that while the more palatable forms of activism Ben & Jerry’s engages in, like environmental concerns, were tolerated, criticism of Israel or Donald Trump is where Unilever draws the line.
With more and more consumers making value-driven judgements when choosing what to buy, disrupting the genuine balance that Ben & Jerry’s has cultivated between social consciousness and commercial success isn’t likely to do Unilever any favours.
“Ben & Jerry’s” by shankar s. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.