MFM Mini - How Ben & Jerry’s Turned Misfortune Into Fortune

i was at an event once and ben i think it was ben ben from ben and jerry's was there and he was talking about the story of ben and jerry's you know the ice cream brand and you're talking about the beginning alright so i have a bunch of notes from it because i had never heard this anywhere so let's rewind the clock nineteen seventy eight you know gallon of gasoline is like seventy nine cents a pound of bacon is a dollar twenty kobe bryant is born it's nineteen seventy eight you know ultrasound are used for the first time you know tweets were just a sound that bird used and this is when an ice cream revolution was born alright so here's the story of ben jerry's as told to me by by ben himself and okay so so these two guys became friends back in school he he told the stories like it was pe class and everybody had to like you know run the mile and he's like i was a terrible runner and so you know this was sort of like a daily ritual of humiliation for me i would just be at the very back while everybody else ran way further ahead but so was jerry jerry was there too and that was like where they formed their bond was just walking behind a whole bunch of other people running and and said they became friends kind of like in their teens or whatever and and they got reunited because jerry was trying to apply for medical school and yeah i think it was rejected like twenty times from you know applying to medical school and every time you apply you have to wait like another cycle to reapply and so in between cycles he reconnect with ben and these two guys basically said they had nothing in common except for they both worked as ice cream scoop while in school to earn a little bit of money and and so even though they're ice cream sc they knew nothing about ice cream but they decided like you know what if we opened up an ice cream shop our own ice cream shop instead of med school and so they they enrolled in a class called ice cream making it was a correspondence course at penn it was five dollars to attend the course and and by the way they didn't even order two seats they bought one they split the bill two fifty each and that was the only formal training that these guys ever had before building you know like a multi billion dollar brand of ice cream so like any entrepreneurs they they get started to make their fair share mistakes so they they get twelve grand from kind of friends and family ish and they buy an ice cream shop in vermont but it's the middle of winter and it's vermont and so freezing cold so nobody wants ice cream so they they open up and nobody's coming in and until they you know they start brainstorming and this is where their real geniuses is in in the marketing and so they they create this campaign called ap p c b z e e this is long acronym what did this stand for it's stood for a penny off per celsius degree below zero winter extra right so for every every degree below zero you would get a penny off your ice cream and it was just sort of this goofy marketing campaign that kinda spread a little word mouth and it just got it was just enough to get them through the winter season but you know that still didn't they didn't make it of course you know it got a little bit warmer but the their equipment was shitty it was you know sales were slow and most of the ice cream was just melting in the shop basically every day and they needed to come over the plan and so ben said you know what ben loved to drive that was like his favorite thing get in a car drive popped the you know cassette player in and listen to music and drive and so he said look give me some of the ice cream i'll go sell our melting ice cream to restaurants and convenience stores nearby i'll just put them in little pint pint jars or whatever and i'll sell the ice cream by the pint if you can see where this is going and so and that demand was actually quick pretty high so nobody wanted to come to their shop but restaurants wanted their ice cream they liked it and so to convenience stores and so they they got distributors all throughout vermont and this kept growing one day they got a store in boston who had had heard about it and in boston they they started picking up ben jerry's that became the most popular brand of ice cream in the store and so ben jerry's the pint are you know flying off the shelves and you know but there's a little bit of a problem there's a company called pills right pills you've heard of the pills do pills owns h da which is like a premier brand they had just bought it for seventy million dollars and they're trying to increase sales and the executive of pills were noticed so in boston there's a shop where we're not moving as much h dust as we used to and they found out it's because ben and jerry's was getting sort of premier placement in the store and so they go to the owner and they say hey you need to sign an exclusive agreement with pills if you want any pills products you need to promote h and da and you need to stop selling ben jerry's and so the owner you know they're they're like well shit i can't afford to lose pills products so he's like sorry guys pills came to me i i i level with you i have to go with them i love your ice cream but i just can't do it he had met the founders before he had met ben and jerry so he felt obligated to like kinda tell them what this big corporate giant had had done and they started doing this in other stores and so you ben and jerry they were like shit this is a problem but they did the they did the right move here and this is the move you wanna learn they turned their mis fortune into fortune so what most people do is some adversity or mis fortune strikes and they just try to like limit the bleeding right okay it's bad let's just make it not so bad but when you say if you ask a different question how can we turn this mis fortune into fortune you say i don't wanna just stop the bleeding i wanna actually turn this into a benefit and so they came out with this campaign and you can look this up on google it's called the the laundry campaign called what's a dough boy afraid of and they had this they had all these images of the pills do or even just like his hands and they had a image of the pills do boys kind of he's got that like you kind that fluffy white body or whatever just the hands of the dough boy str a pint of ben jerry's with the text saying what's the dough afraid of brilliant marketing campaign they didn't they didn't say oh we got like you know we're the victim right right away they said what's a dough boy afraid of and so you it kind of it's attacking pills it gets curiosity what what are they talking about what's going on here and this turned into the rally cry so they they start buying billboards and banners and bus ads and they're just always showing what's the build what's the dope afraid of and they took out an ad in the rolling stone and it said help to vermont hippie fight the corporate giants right you love that positioning there david wi goliath and so they and they put a number like a one eight hundred call in number and they said look if you wanna find out how how two vermont hippie or fighting corporate giants call this number and you would call in and they would tell the whole story about you know how they were growing and they're a small little brand and then pills strong arming their distributors and they take that story and then they say hey give us your name if you wanna at the end of the voice mail i would say leave your leave your name and address and will send you a mailing kit that was para elliot that basically tells pills to you know pick on someone your own size and and then jerry himself would go and he would protest in front of the pills do pills headquarters in minneapolis he had a sign that said what's the do boy afraid and it was just him standing there and and i got picked up by the news because he called the news and said hey look this is what's happening and so the they they shifted the you know the the the the battle here right so pills where he had all the leverage but they all had everything to lose in public perception in p and they created a p firestorm for them and if they had just said ben and jerry's first hog us that's an ice cream war but instead they said the little guy the the two vermont hippie against the big corporate giant that clearly and that created like a relatable and sort of remarkable they're worth talking about marketing campaign and so and then and then it they would they would literally put flyers out that said do you think the do is afraid of two guys and twenty three people working in four thousand square feet of rented space is the do of do afraid that has hundred and eighty five million in profit and a hundred and eighty five million point hundred eighty five point three million in profits is is not gonna be a hundred and eighty five point four million this year is the do afraid of the american dream and so this story catches on it get starts getting run the new yorker wall street journal and consumers just sort of start to find out about ben jerry's just became the number one growth driver of awareness about ben and jerry's all the other distributors wanted to to check it out what is this ice cream brand that that is that much better than hog us that they had to do this and so ben jerry's goes on ends up getting bought for three hundred twenty six million by unilever you know sort of joins the big guys joins the corporate corporate side but i thought this is an amazing story right from pe class you know from the chu kids at pe they can't run the mile to a rejection from med school starting an ice cream brand in the in the freezing cold in winter of vermont to to ultimately turning pills you know mistake on their on its head and using that as there no one growth driver and pivoting into the pint business this is the ben jerry's story it's a story i love and it's a story about turning your mis fortune into fortune so the next time that bad news hits your company or your brand don't just try to limit the damage don't just do damage control ask yourself how do we use this how do we turn this disadvantage into an advantage alright that's all for me i hope you enjoyed this many if you like these types of stories and business case studies subscribe to my newsletter it's just my name sean prairie dot com i'm trying to grow this baby i'm at i think forty thousand people now and trying to get to a hundred by the end of the year and i'm really like trying hard i'm putting out a lot of good content there so if you like these minis you'll like the news that are go go subscribe alright that's all