Ideating partnership opportunities for Ben & Jerry’s
Analyze a company’s mission statement and public persona to identify priorities, proposing three potential strategic partnerships for a company of your choice.
Course:
Design of Business
Project type
The assignment
Overview
The purpose of this project was to analyze a company’s public persona: press releases, marketing campaigns, senior executive’s statements, etc., and identify three potential partnerships to help them further solidify/build/strengthen that perception in the marketplace.
Company selection
After researching a number of companies, I chose Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Holdings, partly because it is an independent subsidiary of a larger public company. I was interested in exploring the complexities of how a subsidiary of a larger corporation can maintain its unique brand identity within the structure of a larger organization, and how that might affect potential partnerships.
Research and analysis phase
Collect research
Using a variety of sources, including company website, parent company website, and other publicly-available resources, conducted research to assess company’s public persona.
Public image analysis
Company description: international food manufacturer (ice cream)
Ownership type: wholly-owned subsidiary with independent board (owned by Unilever; allowed to operate relatively independently)
Other factors:
outspoken on political and social issues
strives to maintain vision and image as a “grassroots” organization, despite being owned by a large public company
Prioritizes making decisions in line with their mission statement over adhering to parent company’s priorities and values.
Partnership opportunity 1: Ben & Jerry’s + Tesla
Partnering with electric vehicle company for distribution trucks
Rationale:
If Ben and Jerry’s were to partner with an electric vehicle company that makes semi trucks for distribution, this could be a strong partnership.
Benefit to Ben & Jerry’s:
Decreased greenhouse emissions and reduced transportation/ distribution costs
The main benefit to this partnership would be drastically reducing the pollution in all steps of distribution. Ben and Jerry’s benefits by lowering distribution costs, and getting another point to back up their goal of being fully sustainable as an organization.
Partner benefit:
Increased perceived social justice awareness
In a partnership between Tesla and Ben and Jerry’s, Tesla would benefit by having a major corporate partner with a strong social justice awareness, in addition to the environmental benefits the two companies share.
Risk:
Distribution disruption
Ben and Jerry’s would need to invest in ensuring their distribution remains as reliable as with normal distribution methods. While this technology is new and beneficial, it’s not as developed as normal trucks.
Risk mitigation:
Building redundancy
A way to counteract this in the first few years of partnership may be spending more on backup equipment and drivers, investing in warehouse space near major cities in case something goes wrong.
Similar to the ecosystem reimagine, they would need to create insurance for themselves to maintain quality service. If they invest more upfront and be an early adopter of this technology they can cater these new tools and resources to fit their needs more specifically. Simply understanding that this is a new technology, and there will be mechanical errors going into it, that they need to be ready for.
Partnership opportunity 2: Ben & Jerry’s + small local farms
Adding selective sourcing of milk directly from small local farms to current sourcing through large dairy cooperative
Rationale:
Factory farming is responsible for a large portion of pollution. Ben & Jerry’s is vocal about coming from Vermont and supporting local agriculture. If they were to partner with small local farms in Vermont, in addition to the dairy cooperative that they currently source from, they could support local farmers and businesses more directly, as well as stop supporting pollution produced by the major factory farms.
Benefit to Ben & Jerry’s:
Quality control of input ingredients and enhanced public perception
Ben and Jerry’s could be incentivized to do this because they would be getting a higher quality product, supporting the community they advertise as being so involved in, and getting to market these products in a way people would be enticed by.
Partner benefit:
More secure income stream, higher profile
Farms involved in this partnership would get a steady contract from a reputable major local business, which would help them combat the large farms that are often threatening their ability to keep a successful business.
Challenges:
Logistics
The issue with this partnership would be that instead of sourcing from one large supplier, they would need a network of smaller farms with a consistent amount of product comparable to what they could get before. This would require them to create a team internally that develops, oversees, and ensures that the farms are functioning smoothly for what they need. The biggest change is actually receiving the product from a variety of smaller suppliers, and creating a team that can manage it.
Risks:
Supply issues, consistency of key input ingredient
The biggest issue with this partnership would be a variation of consistency in the product they receive. Since they wouldn’t be getting their product from one large supplier, that means that there are a lot more moving parts that could go wrong, the biggest of which being different types of ingredients going into the same product. They would need to find a way to ensure their product stays the same.
Partnership opportunity 3: Ben & Jerry’s + HelloFresh
Increasing product awareness and sustainability perception by partnering with home delivery meal kit company
Rationale:
Since HelloFresh puts an emphasis on reducing food waste and delivering high-quality products, these two brands share similarities that could be beneficial to both of them. Since both of these brands are established, this partnership would be more advertising for their products that are supporting social causes.
Benefit to Ben & Jerry’s:
Adding new distribution channel with shared values
Ben and Jerry’s would get to send their product to tens of thousands of homes every week, and still be pushing more sustainable routes of business growth.
Partner benefit:
Adding enhanced brand recognition to premium product offerings
The motivation for HelloFresh would be to expand their newer revenue stream of “add-ons”. Many of these products aren’t name brand currently, so a big company endorsing that would be helpful.
Shared benefit:
Solidifying status as premium product in each firm’s category
Since Ben and Jerry’s is on the more expensive side of ice cream, that falls perfectly into HelloFresh’s client base which is predominantly young adults with some amount of disposable income.
Risks:
Issues with partner’s reputation could adversely affect sustainability credibility
There is very little risk to this partnership for Ben & Jerry’s, except for ensuring that HelloFresh is able to maintain Ben and Jerry’s brand image and quality standards. There is no financial risk to Ben & Jerry’s once the products are in HelloFresh’s inventory.
Presentation phase
In-class presentation
The above findings were presented in class.
Key takeaways
Although the purpose of this project was to come up with broad ideas for partnerships for our chosen company, it would be interesting to look into these opportunities further to identify additional risks, benefits, and considerations.
Summary
Key tasks
Research
ideation
Deliverables
Company selection
Background research
Key observation report