Ben & Jerry's Web Strategy and a Creative Service Concept
This paper examines the promotional and product strategies employed on the Ben & Jerry's website, analyzing how the site's design, content, and interactive features reflect and reinforce the brand's upscale, ecologically conscious identity. The author evaluates how each page element — from animated banners and virtual factory tours to mail-order pints and a flavor graveyard — targets a well-educated, "green," and engaged consumer. The paper then transitions to a creative exercise in which the author proposes an original fictional web-based business concept, "Unprincipled Sleazeballs, Inc.," a referral service connecting actors with clients who need assertive representation in everyday confrontational situations.
- Ben & Jerry's Website as a Marketing Tool: Overview of Ben & Jerry's brand identity online
- Product Promotion and Consumer Engagement: How each site element promotes and engages consumers
- Upscale Branding and Target Market Strategy: Target market definition and brand positioning
- The Unprincipled Sleazeballs Business Concept: Original fictional actor-for-hire service concept
- Website Design and Customer Experience for the New Service: Proposed website flow and taglines for new service
- Conclusion: Comparing real and fictional web marketing strategies
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What makes this paper effective
- The Ben & Jerry's analysis moves methodically through each website element, linking specific design choices to concrete marketing goals such as consumer trust, brand storytelling, and upselling.
- The creative second section demonstrates the author's ability to apply the same marketing logic — target market definition, tagline writing, user experience flow — to an original and humorous business concept.
- The paper sustains a consistent, lightly ironic voice that suits the quirky subject matter without undermining analytical credibility.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses descriptive marketing analysis to deconstruct a real brand's digital presence. The author identifies audience segmentation, persuasion techniques, and UX design decisions, then synthesizes them into a coherent argument about how online presentation reinforces brand identity. This technique — moving from observed detail to interpretive claim — models good applied marketing analysis at the undergraduate level.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into two distinct parts. The first, and longer, section provides a feature-by-feature walkthrough of the Ben & Jerry's website, culminating in a market positioning summary. The second section pivots to an original creative exercise, applying the same marketing framework to a fictional business. Each section flows from product/service description to consumer targeting to site design rationale, mirroring real marketing planning logic.
Ben & Jerry's Website as a Marketing Tool
Ben & Jerry's website is an almost perfect reflection of the company as the consumer popularly views it: high quality but "down home," clever, humanistic, ecologically minded, and service-oriented. Few people have not heard at least some part of the Ben & Jerry story — how two friends pooled their savings and started a little ice cream shop in a converted gas station, a sort of commercial swords-into-ploughshares tale.
The website opens with a top banner reminiscent of Blue Mountain Arts, containing simple animation of simple shapes. In this case, it is snowflakes falling on a cow that licks an ice cream cone. (One assumes that the sun shines in summer, leaves fall in autumn, and so on.)
Right below that, a product shot tells the consumer immediately that this is organic ice cream, appealing to the "greens." It mentions that it is good for you — that "your body will thank you" — and that it tastes good, appealing to the "foodies." It then invites praise, asking for "love letters." This is all calculated to engage the consumer further; one can assume that a visitor to a Ben & Jerry's website was already fairly well hooked. But a little invitation to interaction never hurts, especially when it is clever.
Works Cited
Ben & Jerry's Homemade Holdings, Inc. Ben & Jerry's. Accessed 8 February 2004. http://www.benjerry.com/
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