Ben and Jerry's: Into The World of Doggo Desserts

Do you have a dog? Would you give your dog ice cream?

Founded in 1978, in Burlington Vermont, Ben and Jerry's is our favorite social aware ice cream business. Ben and Jerry's social media pages are full of promotional material on their ice cream flavors as well as social justice graphics to inform its consumers on various things going on in the world. Ben and Jerry's found itself in a pickle (and not the ice cream flavor thankful) when it came to social media and the groundswell comments. After returning from a social media hiatus in July, the company had some catching up to do. You can read more about Ben and Jerry's and their social media hiatus on my previous blog post!

How did Ben and Jerry's come back from this hiatus? With its standard promotional and social postings, and one additional social media campaign. Dogs! That's right you heard me, Ben and Jerry's is marketing to all the dog owners with their Doggie Desserts Wall of Wags Contest.

Ben and Jerry's released Doggie Desserts back in January 2021. Your favorite dog can now join you in family ice cream night with one of two flavors. There is Pontch's Mix made of a combination of peanut butter and pretzel swirls or Rosie's Mix that has real pumpkin and mini cookies in a sunflower butter base.

We are all wondering why dog's are getting the special treat and not cats, but that is just because cats do not have sweet receptors, but dogs do. So Ben and Jerry's made desserts for man's best friend. But now in October Ben and Jerry's is bringing their social media focus back to dogs. I mean who are we kidding we can't look at a dog and not feel happy.

Ben and Jerry's posted about their Wall of Waggs on October 5, 2021:

Ben and Jerry's is engaging with their consumer's by asking them to post photos or videos of their dog to win prizes and be features in the the gallery. The week's are themed giving consumer's some guidelines for their fun photos. The hashtag, #WallofWaggsContest, that Ben and Jerry's used in their first post has 658 posts!

Ben and Jerry's even created its own Instagram account for dogs!

benandjerrysfordogs's first post was on October 20, 2020:

Ben and Jerry's put a lot of work and thought into this campaign!

Looking at Ben and Jerry's on Google Trends reveals some interesting things to all of us. The Doggie Dessert Contest definitely impacted Ben and Jerry's social media presence in some form. First we can see that from the date of posting the Doggie Dessert Contest on October 5th to October 12th Ben and Jerry's was having some noticeable increases within their social media presence. Over that week, fourth in the list of top related queries, was "ben and jerry's dog" with a 60% increase.

Social Search shows a another side of Ben and Jerry's online activity from the perspective of the groundswell. When using Social Search to look for Ben and Jerry's we can see that the brand receives more positive feedback than negative.

A lot of the online conversation that Social Search displayed was consumers posting pictures of their ice cream pints or there were a few memes requesting the brand to bring back beloved ice cream flavors. There were even some tweets displaying dogs! This post from Denise is fairly recent too!

The audience of dog owners, and various pet owners, seems to be going quite well for Ben and Jerry's. This campaign is clearly successful across platforms. Ben and Jerry's may look to do more campaigns like this and widening their ideal client to include ice cream lovers with pets or ice cream lovers who play sports or other activities that could be posted to social media. This will allow them to have more individualized engagement that ends up with cute photos!

The overall online tone from Ben and Jerry's is positive and energizing. The groundswell seems to be responding to this tone with their own positive outlook continuing various conversation topics like dogs, to fit into Ben and Jerry's branding, or to ask for ice cream flavors. Did you know that Ben and Jerry's had a red velvet flavor? I didn't until I saw a tweet about it!

Social Mention also reveals the kinds of media that Ben and Jerry's is involved in, with photos have the most tags and mentions to social media. Along side links with the second highest number. This shows the various engagement that individuals are creating.

Brief Comparison

If we look at Ben and Jerry's compared to another popular ice cream like Haagen Dazs ice cream, we can see that Ben and Jerry's is not a very popular brand on social media. Haagen Dazs has significantly more social media interactions over the past week October 16th to October 22nd than Ben and Jerry's. 

How can Ben and Jerry's try to improve their groundswell and social media interactions? Let's look.

Positives and Negatives

Ben and Jerry's has shown some improvement from the first social media report we looked at. Ben and Jerry's is displaying a significant improvement in involving its consumers in their marketing. Ben and Jerry's is displaying a energizing technique by giving the groundswell a way to interact with the company. Consumers are given an incentive because they may win a prize after posting their dog. Ben and Jerry's is clearly attempting to engage and energize their customer base and considering that the #WallofWaggsContest has over a thousand posts, I think they are doing it.

However, Ben and Jerry's is still displaying a lack of talking and listening to the groundswell. While there seems to be an improvement in getting costumer involvement back into the marketing, Ben and Jerry's does not talk with their consumers. After a few scrolls through the #WallofWaggsContest posts, I did not see any comments from Ben and Jerry's social media pages on Instagram. Ben and Jerry's needs to actively talk and listen to the consumers who are participating in their marketing. Without that, there is no way for Ben and Jerry's to truly embrace the groundswell.

The #WallofWaggsContest is a great form of marketing but in order to progress Ben and Jerry's will need to come up with more creative solutions to stay involved with the groundswell. Some basic ideas would be for Ben and Jerry's employees to actively participating in the contests on the main pages, because employees are important resources. Ben and Jerry's can also begin the simple process of commenting on their consumers post even if it a simple thank you for participating or telling someone that their dog is cute. This will go along way and make consumers feel like they are valuable and that their participation is desired. Once the company becomes better at interacting, they should continue to find creative and inclusive campaigns that allow for consumer and employee participation.

More Suggestions

Ben and Jerry's is a popular company and as we have discussed they have some work to do with the groundswell to become a better and stronger online presence. But beyond involvement with the groundswell is there any other suggestions we can offer Ben and Jerry's. Yes I believe there are.

Ben and Jerry's should add a social responsibility policy to their social media pages. It is good PR practice to have a rules and regulations page or section that allows followers to see guidelines. This would have helped to protect Ben and Jerry's from the trust fall out of their hiatus from social media. This is also a good practice because, for example, if someone posted an inappropriate picture to a Ben and Jerry's then the company would have ground to stand on for deleting the comment. This is a good standard practice for all company's, but especially for a company that puts it political beliefs on public display.

Ben and Jerry's needs to work on their two way dialogue communications. There are some instances, as we have looked at, that Ben and Jerry's does not seem to interact fully with their consumers. Ben and Jerry's should take the future of the Wall of Waggs contest to develop this two way dialogue. Is there a specific advertisement or campaign that consumers would like to see? Ben and Jerry's should listen and then communicate with the groundswell to make this possible, through a campaign or standard social media usage.

What suggestions do you have for Ben and Jerry's? Would you give your dog a Ben and Jerry's ice cream?