Ben & Jerry’s sparks purposeful marketing with employee-driven acts

Ben & Jerry’s, the ice-cream brand, relies on bottom-up input in helping it deliver on its brand purpose of driving social change in important ways.

Matthew McCarthy has spent 22 years in brand management at Unilever, working on a portfolio that ranged from Ragu sauces to Wishbone pet foods, Bertolli olive oil, and Dollar Shave Club’s e-commerce operations.

A year and a half ago he moved to Burlington, Vermont, to become the CEO of Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s – an ice cream brand with a long history of purpose-driven marketing.

“Everything we do,” he reported, “is anchored in the values that we inherited” from Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, the brand’s co-founders, and purpose-driven leaders who earned a reported $326 million in 2000 when Unilever...

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