I was at a conference recently where Ben Greenfield from Ben & Jerry's was the lunchtime keynote speaker. The thing that struck me about the talk was how a very unlikely duo became very successful by ignoring conventional wisdom at every turn. Here are some of the ways they ignored conventional wisdom that I liked a lot:
1. Ben & Jerry's started in Burlington, Vermont, selling ice cream cones. The problem they quickly ran into was that no one bought ice cream cones in the winter in Vermont!! To try to stimulate sales in the winter, they offered a penny off for each degree below 32 degrees it was that day. In other words, if it was 2 degrees out, you got 30 cents off your cone. Brilliant! [Does this spur any creative packaging ideas for your business?]
2. They had a heck of a time getting merchants to buy their ice cream from them since they already stocked Haagen Dazs and other flavors. In order to break the logjam, they offered to BUY BACK any unsold ice cream from the stores. This turned out to be the difference maker for them in the early days! [How about you try doing a money back guarantee for your product as a test -- might it work better than all traditional marketing stuff combined?]
3. Once they started to get momentum in Vermont, they convinced some larger distributors to carry their products alongside Haagen Dazs. Once Pillsbury (Haagen Dazs parent company) found out about their distributors carrying both products, they threatened to pull out of their arrangements with them. Ben & Jerry's went on a "What's The Doughboy Afraid Of" offensive against Pillsbury. They took out ads in the Wall Street Journal, Jerry picketed in front of Pillbury headquarters, they put a call to action about this issue on their ice cream containers asking customers to write to Pillsbury's ceo, etc. Guess what -- it worked! [Is there a clever way to upset the distribution model in your industry?]
4. When they were about $3million in annual revenue, they wanted to expand. All of their advisors told them to talk with venture capitalists and private equity folks. They didn't like that idea, so they did their own version of an IPO. They sold shares in Ben & Jerry's for $126 each door-to-door and store-to-store in Vermont and raised $750k -- one in every 100 households in Vermont bought a share in the company. They later did a national offering in the same style to raise more money. Fascinating! [Could you leverage your fundraising process to build more fans of your company and get more customers?]
5. When they were well down the path and quite successful, Jerry went to one of his advisors and said he wasn't happy and was thinking of selling the business. His advisor said, "If you don't like it, change it -- your the CEO." Ben never thought about it that way and set about making some radical changes to the company to align it with the way he thought a business should be run. The most glaring of these changes was that 7.5% of the company's pre-tax profits was put it into a foundation that supported organizations that the employees thought helped social and environmental issues. He didn't comment on this in his keynote and I don't think he did it for this reason, but I betcha this more than paid for itself in profits because everytime someone eats their ice cream, they know that some of the profits are going to a good cause. [Could you spin up a similar program that would help your bottom line at the same time as it helped a good cause: 1+1=3?]
HubSpot is the first company I have ever started (if you don't count Stroker Ace Painting Co in college -- smile) and I have found myself having an interesting relationship with conventional wisdom. Here at HubSpot we tend to question conventional wisdom every step of the way. In some cases, that questioning turns into our spending a lot of cycles on something that turns out to work just fine if you follow conventional wisdom -- uugghh! In other cases, that questioning turns out to be just right because conventional wisdom is out of date and dead wrong.
Our biggest "win" as a company is our complete rejection of traditional marketing conventional wisdom. As you all know by now, we believe that traditional, outbound marketing (advertisements, email spam, cold calls, etc) is dying as people are getting sick of the interruptions and getting better at blocking them out (dvr's, pop-up blockers, Pandora, spam protection, CallerID, etc). It is this complete rejection of marketing conventional wisdom upon which we have built our company and it is working out pretty well so far (3600 customers today -- up from about 1600 customers a year ago).
Probably our second biggest "win" as a company is our near complete rejection of how "work" should happen and how the relationship between a company and its employees should operate . This rethinking of the work structure and culture has provided big benefits for us in that we have attracted really great employees who are highly motivated...the company was named the #1 Place To Work by The Boston Business Journal and the #4 Place To Work by the Boston Globe.
What do you all think? Do you have an complicated relationship with conventional wisdom like I do? Do you tend to go with the flow or try to rethink the flow like Ben & Jerry's did?
What companies do you really admire? Do those companies win because they follow conventional wisdom or ignore it?
Inbound Marketing Blog Feed
Kathleen Milbier 2:58 PM on November 29, 2010
Unconventional ways of creating a brand is the way to go these days.
The Compressed Kathleen Project is a strong proponent of Ben, Jerry & Blogspot!
http://www.thecompressedkathleenproject.com/2010/08/american-dream-believer.html
Jill Fratianne 3:00 PM on November 29, 2010
Another New England based company that I admire that does not follow conventional wisdom is Samuel Adams - they take as much pride in their employees as their beer and it shows in the quality of their product.
Liz Karschner 3:20 PM on November 29, 2010
Great Article. A lot of people forget that sometimes thinking outside of the box will reap much better rewards then always sticking to traditional approaches to a problem. Ben & Jerry's is prime example of this.
Laura Klover 3:23 PM on November 29, 2010
Patagonia is the company I admire the most. They consistently walk their talk and constantly look for ways to improve. Yvon Chouinard's book "Let My People Go Surfing" is a wonderful book for business people who want to think outside the box and also be sustainable.
Kathleen Milbier 3:28 PM on November 29, 2010
CORRECTION:
Unconventional ways of creating a brand is the way to go these days.
The Compressed Kathleen Project is a strong proponent of Ben, Jerry & HUBspot! (sorry :)
Learn more: http://www.thecompressedkathleenproject.com/2010/08/american-dream-believer.html
electricians st andrews 3:35 PM on November 29, 2010
If you want to get noticed these days , you gotta be different from the rest . A great example of going against the trend , to then become it , genius .
John Knight Jr 3:50 PM on November 29, 2010
Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream is great and their employees love those two guys. 3 things all companies have to do. Get all the business owners and employees pulling in the right direction together, the other is the customer is the King and thirdly pay your employees well without limits! The rest will work itself out.
Cliff Elam 3:59 PM on November 29, 2010
Good article.
But some thoughts....
<4> was probably illegal then and sure as heck would be now.
Most people do not realize that they sold to Unilever in 2000 for $400M or so.
-XC
Kyle McCarthy 4:24 PM on November 29, 2010
The toughest part of being unconventional is that when everyone else realizes your success, it becomes convention and you have to start changing again. Surely that is what is happening with social media marketing....
Arthur Hutchinson 4:33 PM on November 29, 2010
remark able article....get it
Marla Wynn 4:53 PM on November 29, 2010
Love the article. I admire Ben & Jerry for creating their ideal company in their own way. You did a nice job of offering current business owners helpful suggestions when wrapping up each of Ben & Jerry's individual strategies.
David Wright 4:56 PM on November 29, 2010
I am fortunate enough to work at the company that I admire most. The Richards Group is the largest privately held advertisng agency in the U.S. With profit sharing, Fridays off for working excess hours, +much more, it can't be beat.
Webdesign @ DragolinDesign 4:58 PM on November 29, 2010
I liked rereading about this, I remember a Ben & Jerry's case study we once did in one of my marketing courses :)
Jon-Mikel Bailey 5:03 PM on November 29, 2010
I like this. I think it is always important to break with established thinking. It's what makes America so great. Conformity is not the way to create success. Thanks for the reminder, now I'm off to buy some Chunky Monkey.
Tisa Yonts 5:08 PM on November 29, 2010
I love Ben and Jerry's Ice Creme and recently, I became a RAVING FAN because I found out they are on track to make all their ice creme 100% trade free!!! Now after reading your post, I love them even more:) What a gift they have. Hope to be more like em:)
Brian Halligan 9:45 PM on November 29, 2010
@Laura Clover Thanks for the referral to the Patagonia book -- I'll check that out. Yves is another guy I respect for rethinking conventional wisdom.
@Kyle McCarthy I'm not sure I completely agree with you regarding how everyone now is doing social media marketing. Very very people do social media marketing well. The folks who do it well are the folks who create remarkable content and are clever about the way they promote in the social mediasphere to create conversation that draws people back into their funnel. ...99% of co's who are "doing social media marketing" have stuck their toe in the water with a corporate Twitter account and a Facebook fan page and are chirping, but very few are contributing meaningful content that creates conversation that pulls potential customers into the funnel. It turns out, that its harder than most people think.
Makati Directory 10:44 PM on November 29, 2010
I LOVE IT. They are grass roots to the bone! They only prove that even not so conventional wisdom can be right.
Jack Derby 4:45 AM on November 30, 2010
Brian,
Great article and thought provoking even though I don't agree with the politics of either Ben or Jerry who heavily promote their own political outlook in the company. But, then they live in the United Republic of Burlington/Waterbury, the home of Bernie Sanders and Howard Dean.
Totally buy-in to Inbound Marketing, and yet my noteworthy company would be Brainshark because of the positive and highly collaborative culture that they've created. A mixture of Outbound & Inbound, but clearly the leader in Sales 2.0.
Christy Glesing 8:13 AM on November 30, 2010
Now I know why I like your blog - and your company - so much. It's unconventional!!
Matches Malone 9:22 AM on November 30, 2010
I have a huge problem with the way things are being done in the entertainment industry when it comes to getting a movie made. You can write the greatest screenplay in the world, and yet, 'they' won't make your movie, simply because you don't have an A-List star attached. Or any one of a thousand other reasons. It's all about job protection, and it's easier to say no.
I believe this to be why we're seeing the better stuff online first, simply because entry into the field has become very cheap. Anyone can buy a camera these days, and shoot a movie, and distribute it themselves, and quite possibly, make enough to make the next one.
Scott Bush 10:37 AM on November 30, 2010
What Ben & Jerry's did for a long time is what troubles a lot of companies. So many companies, big and small, get caught up in being safe. They'd rather repeat what someone else did then think of something new they'd experiment with. People are fearful of taking risks, especially when money is on the line.
However, time and again, companies like Ben & Jerry's are proving that thinking unconventionally is a path to success. These types of companies will be the exception forever though, which leaves ample opportunity for success for companies that are willing to thinking outside the "standard norm" and push the limits of their industry a bit.
My favorite company that challenges their industry's way of thinking is Brooks (running shoes). They offer a more communal feel to their marketing, building fun and creativity, instead of just spouting off what they think people want to hear. Furthermore, many of their shoes are being built with the environment in mind (using sustainable products, shipping practices, etc.), which again is something no other company in the industry does to a great extent.
Being creative and thinking outside the box is a big first step to being a successful company, but actually acting on those thoughts and ideas is what takes a company from being good to being great.
Great blog post, Brian!
Anne - InteliWISE 1:07 AM on December 06, 2010
I really like Ben & Jerry's. They know what to do even go out of what is conventional and yet they are successful in what they do. They show that there are lots of ways in order to achieve what they need.
Marcos Alcantara 6:38 PM on December 10, 2010
Wow, Brian... Looking for new hires?? :-P
Great article!