Jay Curley – How businesses can be activists and help c… — Transcript

Jay Curley of Ben & Jerry's discusses how businesses can be activists, build social movements, and use marketing for social change.

Key Takeaways

Businesses have a responsibility to society beyond just returning profits to shareholders.
Cause marketing focuses on consumer needs, while activism starts with company values and social change goals.
Building social movements is essential for creating meaningful and lasting change.
Marketing and storytelling can be powerful tools for advocacy and engaging consumers in social issues.
Collective action from multiple businesses and organizations is needed to address major societal challenges.

Summary

Jay Curley explains the evolving role of businesses as activists with responsibilities beyond profit.
He distinguishes between cause marketing and genuine advocacy driven by company values.
Curley emphasizes the importance of building social movements to create lasting societal change.
He shares Ben & Jerry's approach of integrating activism into marketing and storytelling.
The talk covers historical societal forces and how business power has shifted over time.
Curley highlights the need for businesses to balance profit with positive social impact.
He discusses the role of digital storytelling and media in advancing advocacy campaigns.
Examples include Ben & Jerry's work on voting rights, climate change, and social justice.
Curley encourages other businesses to adopt activist roles to amplify collective impact.
He presents a framework for transforming traditional marketing tools into instruments of change.

Chapters

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

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[Music] Good morning. Thank you so much for having me here. It's very exciting, and it's a really, really exciting time to be talking about how businesses really can become activists and help to change the world, so it's more important than ever.

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Because, you know, businesses have a role in a place and really a responsibility towards society and towards humanity. So we're gonna dive into that today. I'm gonna tell you three things. I'm going to tell you the difference between

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cause marketing and what being an activist and advocacy organization can look like. I'm gonna tell you why building social movements is critical to creating change in the world, and lastly, I'm gonna introduce you to a model, basically a way of thinking that can

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help you to transform your traditional marketing tools into tools to create a better world. It's what we try to do every day at Ben & Jerry's. You know, we don't always hit the high bar, but what we strive really hard to do it. So

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just real quickly, my name's Jake Early Ben at Ben & Jerry's, a little over nine years now, and it is an amazing place to work. I live back in Vermont in the US, and, you know, we have wonderful green

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hills and a lake. It's a great place, and I run the US consumer marketing team and, from a marketing perspective, our global activism and advocacy work. But really, what that breaks down to is I kind of have three jobs. One is a traditional ice

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cream marketer. All right, and that looks like you would expect it to look like, telling our fans about our new products. Like, if you guys know, we just launched our non-dairy line here in the Netherlands, so things like that, things

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that you would expect an ice cream marketer to do. The second bit is really around being a digital storyteller, right? And there's a—everyone's saying that these days, but that's really my job. We're running our organization

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more like a media company, where we're telling, you know, 500 plus stories a year, you know, 100 plus videos, thousands of pieces of content, and we have to run our organization like a media organization. In the last third, the last third is

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really around being a campaign manager for an advocacy organization, and that's mainly what I'm gonna focus on today. When we get—when I do all three of those things at once, they're all better. I'm a better ice-cream marketer, I tell better

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stories, and I can create more positive impact in the world. So that's what we're gonna dive into. Before we do, though, I need to transgress or take a step back, and honestly, I need a favor from you guys. So when I was invited maybe six

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months ago to come here, I was really excited. I'm really passionate about inspiring and enlisting other businesses to kind of take this approach that we have, and I was like, okay, October, I think I should be able to do that, October 12th.

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October 12th, so today is my oldest son's fifth birthday. All right, clearly I'm here on the other side of the ocean and not in Vermont, so if you guys could please indulge me, I want to send a happy

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birthday message to him from here. Is that—can we do that? Is that cool? All right, so this—what I'm gonna do, get my phone out. It's 4:00 in the morning, so I'm gonna record this, although he's probably off because he's excited

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because it's his birthday. But real simple, I'll do a quick little message to him, and then we'll kind of turn the camera around. We'll do one, two, three, and then we can say happy birthday, Chet. Is that cool? All right, let's do a practice

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round. One, two, three. Happy birthday, Chet. Awesome. All right, here we go. Maybe. Hi, Chet. Hi, buddy. Look, you're up big on the screen, and there's lots of people here, and we want to wish you a happy birthday. So one, two,

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three. Happy birthday, Chet. All right, thanks, buddy. I love you. Thank you, guys. That also helps because I feel really guilty that I'm not home, and this helps a little bit. So all right, let's dive in and let's jump back

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literally a couple thousand years, human society. And this is—this is gonna be a very top level, and I'm sure you can poke a little bit of holes in this, but bear with me, please. For thousands of years,

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the dominant force in society was usually religion, and that had its downsides to it, but one of the upsides was, at least in theory, religion was about trying to make the world a better place for people. It didn't always

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happen, but that was what most of the world's major religions are striving for. You know, over the last couple hundred years, nation states really became the dominant force in society, and in a similar way, you can

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find a lot of fault and problems that we had with that, but in general, the nation-state is there for the health and the existence of society, or at least those it deems to be its society. Now, post-World War II, our challenges that

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businesses have been the dominant, most powerful force in society. The problem with that is most businesses' legal responsibility is to return profit to their shareholders, and that is a very, very narrow focus that excludes the well-being of society.

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That's the bad part. The good part is that we have had a bit of an awakening over the last couple decades around the need and the responsibilities that business has to create a more healthy, better society. So what I'm going to talk

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about today is that work does not have to be in sacrifice of returning a profit to your shareholders. You can do both, and as a matter of fact, you have to. If businesses keep that narrow focus, then they will have no one to sell their

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products to. So we'll take a step back here for a sec, just a little bit about Ben & Jerry's. So we've been around for almost 40 years now, and we've been trying our best to do this work all

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throughout those years. Back in the '80s, we were, you know, working on issues—remember, it was the Cold War—around demilitarization, and, you know, we've advocated through the years for more sustainable food systems, LGBTQ rights, and it's something that's kind of

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baked into our DNA. What that's allowed us to do is, in some ways, kind of break ground on how a business can do this work. But I think what we know we need is we need all of you to be doing this same

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work at your businesses. You know, Ben & Jerry's can go away tomorrow, and relatively speaking, the world will go on just as it was, right? And so I think what we need to do is enlist more businesses, more agencies, more folks like you guys

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to join us. So I titled today "Talk Beyond Cause Marketing," because I think as business has awoken to this idea around the need to be responsible to its customers, to society, this whole field of cause marketing has grown up, and there's—to be

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very clear, there's nothing wrong with cause marketing. I'm not knocking it, but I think it's very different building a cause marketing campaign versus doing real issue advocacy work. And the difference really is where you come from and what your goals are, not the actual

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substance of what you build. So in cause marketing, you often start with what do my customers care about, just like you would if you were launching a new product or, you know, meeting some type of consumer demand. It

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really starts with what is the need of my consumer, and then how do I emotionally connect with them, and then I'm gonna build my brand around that. And the goal usually is around brand affinity and building brand equity, and

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that's fine. There's a lot of good in the world that happens because of cause marketing. Our approach is different. We start not with what does our target market think or need. We start with what are the issues and values that our

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company holds dear, what is our purpose in the world, what do we believe in, and then what is the change we seek to create in the world, and then we build campaigns to inspire our fans to join us,

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to join us in these movements, and that's how we seek to create social change. Now, again, the output may look very similar, but the approach, what your objectives are, what you're measuring, what your strategy is, is different. So that's what

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we try to do. We try to take kind of the tools that any marketer has: your advertising, your

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well if you're really trying to change the way things are there's a good chance you're gonna piss people off because there's a lot of people who like the status quo those people are usually the folks that are either empowered they're

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certainly not the ones that are disenfranchised but think of it this way if you are taking a stand standing up for your values in a way that is pissing people off at the same time you are likely connecting with a group of people

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who share the same values as you and from a business perspective there's no better way to build a brand than to have a deep connection with your fans or your consumers that are built around actual shared values not around pandering to

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what their current needs are so so think about that from from a brand building perspective now I'm often hesitant to talk about this or to share this but given the audience I it's worth going through the activism and advocacy work

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that we do is good for our business it's not why we do it which is why I'm even hesitant to share it and to be very blunt if the campaign's I was building my KPIs were around ROI in sales I'd probably do

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things differently and I probably wouldn't do as well but when you do it you end up getting people to be more excited about who you are and what you're doing and you know at least in my business that usually leads to sales the

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other thing is when you're doing this work and you're having meaning in people's lives and you're trying your best to have a real impact on society you are relevant you are part of culture and again that's critical for certainly consumer

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businesses moving forward alright so there's a lot of marketers in the room depending on if you went to school for marketing or when or who your professor might have been you probably learned about either the four PS or the five PS

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or the six P's when I google it there's even the 7 PS of marketing and that kind of classical approach works fairly well when you are you know selling soap to people who need so right and it doesn't

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necessarily mean you need to abandon it but what I want to introduce is a way of thinking in an approach that will allow you to kind of shift the tools that we have to do this issue advocacy work so

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I'm calling it the 6 PS of activist marketing because US marketers really like alliteration and we like frameworks so here is a framework that has nice alliteration but it really focuses on purpose which is why your company even

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exists policy the actual change you're seeking to create people your team that needs to be living and breathing this work power which is really the full operations of your business publishing which is really how you can be connecting on an ongoing basis to these

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movements into your fans and lastly pop culture which is about relevancy so what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of take you through each of these each of these steps quickly before I do that I want to share a

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campaign that we did last year in the US that was focused on racial justice and voting rights in America and again we tried our best to apply this framework to to the campaign [Music] there are some things so precious things

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that when we start losing them we have no choice but to wake up if you look at the capital right now and it's surrounded by scaffolding we're building a democracy here and we have to constantly maintain it [Music]

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we need to have a democracy that represents every no matter what line of work you call yourself how do you stay responsible to your principles and how are you constantly looking at yourself in the mirror and making sure that

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you're putting your principles into practice and so to have been in Jerry's to be a partner is going to be huge because ice cream brings people together it does [Music] we all deserve to have a voice we're all

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human we're all people and you know that's our privilege as our honor that's our right to have that so just a little bit of context I think it's very different here but in America you actually have frankly one political

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party that's trying to limit people's rights to vote because it's going to they're scared of their own power and losing it and so we're fighting every day to kind of keep people's rights to vote in that video you probably saw a

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lot of vanity metrics that you're used to seeing and recap videos write impressions and page views and stuff like that we didn't add those in there just to you know follow the cliche of a recap video we put them in there because

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and this is the second bit I really want you guys to remember the goal of our work and I would say the goal in the role that business can play in creating change in the world is to support and

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grow existing social movements right so how do we use our voice in our place to bring more people into existing movements it's not about us deciding what the strategy and what the Voting Rights Campaign should look like what we

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do as a business is we go to those progressive organizations that are working on this we go to the n-double-a-cp we go to common cause we we go to a Color of Change and we say to them what do you need from us how can we

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support your movement right and that's how we build what our KPIs in our objectives are right and then we can kind of do the fun creative builds around that but it's a very different approach and hopefully again what it

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will do is lead to social movements because that's how we create change it's not going to be a single organization or a single business that does this it's going to be people collectively coming together and that's really business's role in creating change in

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the world alright so let's go through those six piece and let's start with purpose and you know every business exists and it has a purpose and frankly if you don't have a differentiated and unique kind of purpose in the world

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you're gonna have trouble in your business regardless let alone trying to do this work but I think it's important to find out what that what that purpose is and then understand how you can use that purpose to create change in the

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world for us at Ben & Jerry's back in the late 80s we really solidified our mission and it's a three-part mission and back in the 80s the idea of having a three-part mission was very radical thankfully today it's not so much make

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the best ice cream in the world that's our product mission give a fair return to our stakeholders that's our economic mission and our social mission which is to use the operations of our business to create change in the world you know that's

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that's different than saying we're gonna make a lot of money not do bad things and give money back via charity all right it's how do we use our everyday operations how do we you know use the ingredients that we source so the stores

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that we have or our marketing to make the world a better place the second bit is policy I think there's really two types of ways that businesses can support social movement one is around changing the dominant narrative and

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culture but the other is on real concrete policy action so we're running right now a campaign around refugee rights across Europe including here in the Netherlands and what we're looking to do is not just change the way people

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slightly think about about the plight of what it might be like for a Syrian refugee whose home has been destroyed to try to come to a place like Europe but we want actual policy change so we're looking for the European Parliament to

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and there's a specific bill to support around legal and safe routes for people to come here so you don't have the dangerous things that are happening and that is actually getting our fans to contact the MPs and that's how we can

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hopefully have you know real policy change the third bit is people now for all the agencies out there this is a big opportunity for you don't take this the wrong way this work cannot be outsourced it must be the people doing this must be

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core in of these movements not reporting on these movements right and that doesn't mean that you have to hire lifelong activist far from it it means the people that are working on this this work have to go through their own

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journeys to learn about the issues to get engaged and to find their purpose and bring that passion to this work I will tell you if all I did was sell ice cream I would have left Ben & Jerry's a

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long time ago and that goes for most of the folks I work with we are there because we believe in our mission and so I think that's a great way to think about it now for all you agency folks

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out there and I this is advice for regardless of whether we're talking about issue advocacy work you need to not be the agency in the other building you need to be on that team you need to be as passionate and you need to be you

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know bringing those issues as forward as anyone else and that way you become vital to your clients power here's the power I am NOT talking about I'm not talking about businesses funding trade groups and opaquely going in behind closed doors to

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try to change government policy that is not the power I'm talking about because unfortunately that's often how businesses interact in the space what I am talking about is your voice your place in culture what you do every day it has power how do you then harness

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it for these issues so for this campaign we launched an ice cream flavor because that's one of the things that we have actually it's the best thing that we have to connect with people and it was called empowerment and it was focused on

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voting rights and what we did is we launched the flavor with Reverend barber down in North Carolina which is kind of ground zero for this type of voting rights work and we got the entire national news to write a story about

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voting rights because we told them we were launching a flavor and Ben and Jerry we're gonna be there it's kind of an old bait and switch but it's how you use your place and your power and your voice to shine the light and help build

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these movements Publishing so again for us we've found that doing one-offs is not a way to build long-term sustainable social movements but being engaged on a regular basis in telling our fans inviting them in around what the issues

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are and how they can get engaged is a powerful tool to building those social movements and when you do that you're able to build kind of credibility with those social movements and with your fans and you're able to kind of you know

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at the right moments have a real impact and you know one example is our support of black lives matter last year and then this this summer after working so hard to get the Paris climate agreement ratified you know our president decided

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he want to get out but again everyone's news feed was was was you know cluttered with here's why leaving the Paris agreement is bad right and we took the exact opposite approach we said here are six reasons why leaves

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leaving the Paris climate agreement is really great and it was things like who needs chocolate and vanilla anyway because climate change is going to destroy those crops we'll start making you know pine cone ice cream and you know it was a satirical approach but it

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cut through the clutter and it got people to realize what the impacts would be if we if we don't live up to that Accord and that's kind of blends nicely into the idea of pop culture and really what I mean by pop culture and I said

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pop culture for relevancy or for alliteration reasons is I mean relevancy how do you stay relevant and how do you use your place with your customers with your fans um to do this work so back in 2009 Vermont as a state legalized

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same-sex marriage I know you guys have figured that out a long time ago in the Netherlands but it took us a while to get there we we renamed Chubby Hubby to hubbyhubby in celebration in back in 2009 that was radical no other

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businesses were supporting that right and so next thing you know we were being talked about on every late-night show but more importantly we were helping to normalize the idea of same-sex marriage so again it really comes back to that

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that relevancy bit so the last bit this is a video that we created for for Paris and it it uses our ice cream this is what happens when ice cream is just a few degrees warmer than it should be for

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Ben and Jerry's it's a mess for the planet it's a metaphor because just a 1.5 degree warming of our planet's climate would have an equally dramatic though much more significant impact but we can prevent it thanks to citizens around the globe who

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stood up and took action world leaders came together in Paris and committed to keep warming below 1.5 degrees and now the real work begins together we can create innovative solutions to keep our planet and those who live on it thriving

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because while a 1.5 degree change may not seem like much the truth is it means the world to us join the global climate movement and take action now at Benjy recom / climate [Music] so yeah we thought we had won that

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battle but we'll still be fighting it you know I think the exciting thing here is we were able to use who we are and our unique you know place in the world we're an ice cream company but use it as

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a metaphor to get people to think differently about what climate change really means in that resonated in culture you know we had all the folks in the movement from the UN to Greenpeace to the climate reality project etc

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sharing out that content so that's basically the model okay hopefully it gives you guys a framework because I you know I've given a talk like this before that is meant really just to inspire and and and people come up to me after and

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they say that's great but what do I do and so I think this is an attempt at trying to share an approach and a framework that you guys can hopefully use in a practical way so three things to think about right the difference

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between cause marketing an - actual issue advocacy the need to grow social movements and then using a framework like this - to bring it to life and I will say I'll be here for the rest of the day I would love any feedback people

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have specifically on the framework because it's far from perfect but hopefully it's a good starting point that can get you guys to think differently so that's where we're at I think that's the exciting part here's the good news and the bad news all right

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we're at a pivotal place in time businesses have the power and the opportunity and we can create change in the world but to be very clear nothing will change not a single thing not unless people like you businesses like

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you companies like you take on this torch and use what you do every day the eight to 10 to 15 hours you spend a day think about how you can use that time to create that more change and create a

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better world so please join us because and yes you do nothing's going to change so thank you all [Applause] [Music]

Topics:business activismcause marketingsocial movementsBen & Jerry'scorporate social responsibilityadvocacy marketingdigital storytellingsocial changevoting rightsclimate change

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between cause marketing and business activism according to Jay Curley?

Cause marketing starts with consumer needs and aims to build brand affinity, while business activism begins with company values and seeks to create social change by inspiring fans to join movements.

How does Ben & Jerry's integrate activism into their marketing strategy?

Ben & Jerry's combines traditional product marketing, digital storytelling, and advocacy campaign management to engage consumers and promote social movements aligned with their values.

Why does Jay Curley believe businesses must balance profit with social responsibility?

He argues that focusing solely on profit excludes societal well-being and risks losing customers, so businesses must pursue both profit and positive social impact to remain relevant and sustainable.

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