Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings Inc. (which trades as “Ben and Jerry’s”) is a popular manufacturer of ice-cream, often coming up with innovative flavors, and even one or two more healthy options. The company was founded in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont (U.S.), infused with a hint of counter-culture ideals. Today the more liberal-leaning aspects exist in the form of marketing, the company itself is a subsidiary of Unilever (a Dutch and British owned company.)
According to The Daily Telegraph, the product “Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough” ice cream has been re-branded, for an unspecified time, as “I Dough, I Dough“, and designed a special commemorative tub. Despite the somewhat cringing pun, the move is a seemingly worthy one. Proceeds from the ice cream sales, Time magazine reports, will go to the Human Rights Campaign. This is a nonprofit that advocates for LGBT rights.
A statement on the company’s website reads: “To celebrate the occasion, and the countless citizens who’ve worked so hard to make it happen, we’re honorarily renaming our Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream I Dough, I Dough for the summer, at participating Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops nationwide.”
This seems to have been thought out a little better than with than the process of naming of new products in the past.
Coming out in support of the gay marriage proposals is not the first time that the company has temporarily re-branded one of its products for a social cause. In February 2012 the company created a limited edition frozen yogurt flavor named “Taste the Lin-Sanity.” This was produced in honor of Asian-American basketball player Jeremy Lin. The concoction was made up of vanilla frozen yogurt, lychee honey swirls, and fortune cookie pieces. This led to controversy, ESPN reported at the time, from some about racial stereotyping.
Earlier, in 2006, the company produced a product called “Black and Tan”, which offended Irish nationalists given that the name also referred to the British paramilitary police force during the Irish uprising before Ireland gained independence from Britain in 1922.
The new Ben and Jerry’s product will hopefully prove to be be less controversial than previous new product ventures and raise some funds human rights charities.
