Each year, the marketing team at Ben & Jerry's (www.benjerry.com) works on a single, large, integrated push related to the company's social mission. Voter registration was the task last year, an election year.
A year later, Noelle Pirnie, the ice cream maker's integrated marketing manager, calls those efforts quite successful, and she offers some valuable lessons learned to integrate next time around.
Ben & Jerry's management unites behind social initiatives with enthusiasm and motivation. Management ignites the employees, and the result is that the company can thoroughly integrate them into the cause as partners, and achieve much more powerful results than with a straightforward sponsorship.
In such a heated election year as the 2004 presidential race, voter registration was a cause in which everyone at Ben & Jerry's, no matter their political leanings, could participate. Along the way, the company engendered goodwill and raised brand awareness among the 18-34-year-old demographic.
Getting Out the Vote
It all started in early 2003, when Ben & Jerry's posted the first "election" for a new flavor. Primary Berry Graham won the vote via a Web site poll. The vote was promoted on AOL, which gets a steady stream of traffic whether there is a special promotion or not.
Part of getting people to the site to vote for the flavor included an initiative that encouraged site visitors to take an "Oath to Vote." Approximately 50,000 people did so within the program's first four days. As of late September 2004, an additional 15,870 people had taken the Oath on Ben & Jerry's site. Of those, 1,782 had clicked on the link to RocktheVote.com and officially registered to vote.
Summer Surge
The real development push happened in the late spring and summer of 2004, when Ben & Jerry's put into play the key elements of the voter registration effort:
- Ben & Jerry's annual free scoop day on April 27 added a twist this time around, by giving customers a way to register to vote, in-store.
- Ben & Jerry's traveled with, and sample-scooped Primary Berry Graham, at the 50-odd stops of the Rock The Vote (RTV) summer tour.
- Ben & Jerry's kicked off the college portion/fall tour of RTV on August 21 with an event in its own backyard: Burlington, Vermont's waterfront park. In keeping with the tradition of its music festivals, several local bands were brought in. This time, an educational component focused on voter registration was integrated into the program.
In addition to distributing lots of ice cream for sample or purchase, and registering 163 people to vote, the daylong event included speeches from both Vermont gubernatorial candidates, a Ben & Jerry-eopardy game, and an interactive installation designed to show participants how their ideals might differ with the current administration's distribution of discretionary spending, as well as several kid-focused activities.
- Each Tuesday, early June through August 21, a team that included one of 55 newly notarized Ben & Jerry's employees took the scoop truck out to locations across the mostly rural state to register voters. Sometimes it was someone from the marketing department, or someone from operations, or a warehouse staff member commandeering the truck. The greatest challenge of this particular program was that 90% of Vermont residents were already registered to vote. Similarly, for every 100 ice cream samples distributed, just 10 people registered. Total samples of Primary Berry Graham given out: 3,085. Number of voters registered via the company's Vermont Voter Registration Program: 315.
