Be A Chunk Spelunker - Ben & Jerry's

There's always a moment in our life (or many moments) that we craving for ice cream. The New England local brand Ben & Jerry's has always been my favorite. Founded in 1978, Ben & Jerry's has a over-20-year-old history and a good reputation. You can barely see their commercials on TV, leave alone billboards, newspaper ads, etc. Yet they are active groundswell participants.

About Ben & Jerry's

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, from Merrick, Long Island, were childhood friends. When Jerry couldn't get in to med school after college, and Ben dropped out of school, they decided to start their own food business. Having no experience but both love ice cream, they started their own ice cream store in a old gas station building in Burlington, Vermont, May 5, 1978. People love their home-made ice cream. So business soon took off and later they spread the brand Ben & Jerry's, which is named after themselves, across the nation with an ice cream truck.

Ben & Jerry's is now owned by Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch multinational food giant, since 2000. It has retails all over the world. But other than being just an ice cream manufacture company, it has also shown care for politics, social change, and environmental sustainability.

It created its own website in 1995, and now is active on many social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, and Blog. To monitor and analyze how Ben & Jerry's social platform have performed, I use Social Mention, Google Trends, Icerocket, Addictomatic, and Raven Tools to monitor its social media activities.

Who's Talking

People are not quite about Ben & Jerry online. Even though Addictomatic shows that there's no tweet found on Ben & Jerry's, there's actually a lot of people talking about it on Twitter. To have a better peek into its social media effort, I listed out some of its social platforms that have gain most attentions.

Website
Ben & Jerry's has a really cartoonish website, which is different from Hagen Daz and Cold Stone's sophisticated business appearances. This fun and even childish looking design not only fits Ben & Jerry's brand image, but also deliver a message to the audience saying "Ben & Jerry' = Fun", which has won over a lot of young people.

And when you suppose it would be just like any other company website using formal tone, it doesn't. All the contents on the website approach you like a long lost friend, guiding you into the world of Ben & Jerry's. They even make their history sound like a fun story. Hence, with the website being the first online platform of Ben & Jerry's, it has set a cool, fun, friendly tone for its publicity and brand image.


Facebook
Unlike other business Facebook pages that we've all surfed through, you can't find out when Ben & Jerry's joined Facebook because it actually took the time to create posts from 1978, when it was founded long before Facebook was created. This is remarkable since it took great effort to be accomplished. Yet it would definitely earn big: all those posts are like a history book of Ben & Jerry's, and if you go through them, it would unconsciously create an emotional link between you and the brand. Once you get attached, you are more likely to get influenced.

Socialbaker statistic report

Ben & Jerry's Facebook page has already gain 7.2 million Likes. It's posting everyday (besides weekends) and its posts are always with photos. As for its posts, according to Socialbaker, over the past years, Ben & Jerry's has generated more than 1.3million Likes, 2.2million Shares, and 310 thousand Comments on its Facebook posts. And they apply to fans' comments very often, which has created a great interactive atmosphere.

Twitter

Ben & Jerry's Twitter account has by far created 9,857 posts and it's active almost everyday. Although it doesn't have as many followers as its Facebook account does, it still has 125 thousands followers. But its tweets are mostly focusing on event promotions, supporting Fair Trade, and so on. As Twitter is not so much photo oriented (you need to click to view the photos that are hidden in the posts), it doesn't seem that delicious.

Instagram

Our craving for good good starts with our eyes in the world of internet. Instagram, as a photo/video oriented social media platform, has great advantage in online marketing/branding when it comes to Ben & Jerry's. So there's no doubt that even though they only have 600+ posts on Instagram, they already have 258,959 followers. 

Why is their Instagram account more influential than Twitter？Look at what they are posting. 

Besides posting photos that they've taken or created, most of their posts are gathered from their fans. It's like a "Ben & Jerry's in your life" map. This is a great way to engage with your customers in groundswell! Also it has enlarged Ben & Jerry's brand influence. And thus, almost every one of their posts at least got 10k Likes, which is an outstanding result.

Youtube
Surprisingly Ben & Jerry's official Youtube Page is not under the name Ben & Jerry's, but under BenandJerrysHomemade. And most of the videos that they have posted are aimed at European or Asian market. Some of the videos are cute but they didn't really engage with the audience. And thus they have little views and comments.

Analytical Data Observations

Social Mention:

After monitoring Ben & Jerry's social media input and outreach with Social Mention for two weeks, here's the statistic result. So Ben & Jerry's definitely been talked about. Strength means the likelihood for people to talk about your brand, sentiment shows the ratio of positive mentions to negative mentions, passion indicates the likelihood that an individual would talk about your brand repeatedly, and reach measures the range of your influence. So Ben & Jerry's seems to be doing pretty good. How about those couple negative comments? When I dig into it, these "negative" comments turned out to be words like: "I want Ben & Jerry's so bad!""We are killing the Ben & Jerry's." etc. Hence there is, actually, though seems unreal, no negative comment about Ben & Jerry's on social media.

Google Trends

To my surprise, people's interest in Ben & Jerry's peaked in 2008 online. And since then, it dropped. The up and down during each year is understandable: people would want ice cream more in summer than in winter. But with social media's development during the past 3 years, its interest trend should be increasing but not decreasing.


Icerocket

Here, Icerocket shows the Daily Blogs Citation Trend of Ben & Jerry's from mid September till now. It holds a fair consistency. There's no doubt that foodies are enthusiastic people. So this result doesn't surprise me.


Overall, Ben & Jerry's doing a decent job with social media marketing. It has a clear vision for its social media marketing strategy and has successfully made a good influence online. There's always more be done. But I'll say by far, it's made a great effort.