JKR

Through September, Ben & Jerry’s “Chubby Hubby” is getting renamed and tweaked to celebrate gay marriage in the brand’s home state of Vermont. I think this is great for a couple of reasons – firstly it’s nice to see a mainstream brand risk a few sales by embracing gay marriage, and this promotion is probably going to contribute more to normalising the issue than too-cool-for-school similar initiatives by lifestyle brands such as Absolut No Label. It’s also fantastic for a company as large and therefore presumably conservative as Unilever to take what is essentially an editorial point of view. FMCG brands are generally so blandly apolitical – the Sun, Fox News etc etc show that having a particular point of view might not be to everyone’s tastes, but can nevertheless create hugely successful brands, and it feels like an obvious card to play beyond the media category. Ben and Jerry’s initiative feels like the first time a big brand has given the “corporate social responsibility” message some teeth.