Politically exaggerated PR messages are a double-edged sword for companies. On the one hand, you can attract a lot of attention and some of the customers favor. On the other hand, there is always the risk that political start Marketing to the rear. This experience has now made the American ice cream manufacturer Ben & Jerry’s, the interference for quite some time with political Marketing, preferably to progressive issues such as LGBT rights, climate change, migration policy and the recent Black Lives Matter.
Philip Plickert
economic correspondent based in London.
F. A. Z.
this week, Ben & Jerry’s attacked via Twitter, the British interior Minister, Priti Patel, for their hard stance on the migration policy. Patel is currently trying to stop boat migrants that come in a dangerous journey across the English channel from France to Britain. In this year there were already more than 4300, mostly people from Africa or the Middle East.
it Is hypocrisy?
The London government speaks of illegal migrants and a migration crisis. The PR-Team of Ben & Jerry’s tweeted now that there is no “migration crisis” the real crisis is the lack of humanity was to welcome immigrants, the climate change and torture fled. However, the boat migrants come from France, argues that the London government – this is a safe country.
The Twitter-message from Ben & Jerry’s triggered a huge discussion on the net and in the media, but for an ice cream, a rather unpleasant turn. There were a lot of approval from Fans and the politically minded, the black political activist Femi Oluwole showed up on Twitter, laughing with an ice pack: “I stand behind Ben & Jerry’s,” he wrote.
But then a vehement opposition, and massive hypocrisy came out, allegations were made. Up on the front page of the UK edition of the “Financial Times” brought the dispute. The Times newspaper ran the headline clearly negative: “Ben & Jerry’s gets the cold shoulder.”
The Whole threatened for the ice cream to be to damage a Reputation, because the Twitter-sayings, were as lying “Virtue Signalling” (Signal rejected of one’s own virtue). Conservative Newspapers like the Daily Mail lashed out with full force in to the ice maker with left-liberal founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, was taken over in 2000 by the international consumer goods group Unilever, but still, whatever is led.
“Overpriced Junk food”
From the interior Ministry, it was said, the ice cream of Ben & Jerry’s, son of truth”overpriced junk food”. The foreign Secretary of state James Cleverly wrote, ironically, an order: “Can I please have a ball of statistically false virtue signals with my super-overpriced ice cream?”
