Earthy Crunch

American Demographics, June 1, 2002 by Matthew Grimm

Byline: Matthew Grimm

It always comes off as a bit unseemly when a corporation announces a music sponsorship. Not to even broach the Britney Spears and 'NSyncs of the world, bred and conditioned to be little more than glossy shills, not least for their own pestilent recordings - but rock 'n' roll has always retained, deserved or not, an air of legitimacy grounded in the genre's early countercultural roots. As such, the rock band's role as a "promotional platform" for product X or company Y seems to be a heretical mismatch of social entities, the poet, as it were, writing copy for the suits.

Ben & Jerry's Homemade has pulled it off over the years, ascribable to the company's independent, boutique image as anchored to its earthy, post-hippie founders. Never heavy advertisers, for years Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield made their brand stand out by way of imaginative combinations of ingredients, goofy flavor names occasionally linked to their favorite musicians (such as Jerry Garcia and Phish) and a raft of eco-conscious associations. These days the brand belongs to Unilever, but its most recent cause-related tie-in with the Dave Matthews Band seems to indicate the consumer products giant is willing to continue the brand's strategy apace, at a time when its message might be more salient than ever.

Matthews has put his own green-minded imprimatur on the new flavor, One Sweet Whirled, a play off his song "One Sweet World," around which Ben & Jerry's has crafted a grassroots promo to encourage the reduction of greenhouse gases. The company has hit the road for the band's tours, holding One Sweet World Interactive Events at concert venues, offering tastes of the new product and giving info on how to help impede global warming, elements paralleled on the Web site onesweetwhirled.com. Ben & Jerry's retail shops will also get involved by setting up "action stations" to encourage participation. Portions of sales will go to SaveOurEnvironment.org, a consortium of green non-government organizations (NGOs), such as the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Federation.

One Sweet Whirled offers Ben & Jerry's typical sweet indulgence - caramel and coffee ice creams swirled together with marshmallow, caramel and coffee-fudge chips - that has made it the fatty treat of choice of young adults and Baby Boomers. The Matthews link skews a bit younger and more male than the brand's stereotypical Sex and the City urbanite treating herself after a bad day at work. But as the company has pointed out, the band's general 18- to 24-year-old following is confluent with the heaviest buyers in the super-premium ice cream category.

The grander mission would seem a bit more problematic - can an ice cream brand help put its cause on the map of public consciousness among a savvy adult demographic inundated with seemingly more pressing and horrific news for nearly a year? And can a progressive/left cause find receptive ears despite a public agenda that has basically been monopolized by the right wing, which has long dismissed global warming as the confabulation of hippie-dippy crackpots?

Although Ben & Jerry's spokespeople did not return repeated phone calls, Cohen himself has made it clear that it is incumbent upon those with the budget for mass communications to take the point on such matters. "I think that people tend to relegate [the issue of] the environment to 'environmentalists' or nonprofit organizations," he told CNNfn in April. "And the reality is we're never going to solve the problem until we take on that cause in the mainstream."

Given all the news that Americans have been bombarded with since Sept. 11, we might expect environmental concerns to be low on their list. Indeed, since the Gallup Organization started measuring American consciousness of global warming, it has tracked those worried "a great deal" about it from a low of 24 percent in 1997 to a high of 40 percent in 2000. That index fell to 29 percent this year, as of an early March sampling of 1,006 adults.

Worse, the outpouring of charitable donations after Sept. 11 and the recessionary settling thereafter have done little to boost NGOs. Forty-four percent of U.S. charities saw declines in fundraising in the months following the terrorist attacks, compared with the same period the previous year, according to the Association of Fundraising Professions. In particular, most environmental organizations saw donations decline in October 2001 versus October 2000.

Whether people make the connection or not, Sept. 11 has coalesced a sort of holism among many Americans, says Mona Doyle, president of the Consumer Network, a Philadelphia firm that conducts polling of consumers. The violent threats, and our impotence in the face of them, have given rise to broader scrutiny of the general welfare and "what we can do," says Doyle. "It's a consciousness of our frailty," she says. "But that's higher up than it was, and I think that's a very efficient response, that given the chance to do what's right, let's do it."