Jerry Greenfield on entrepreneurship at Oberlin (live blogging) | Social Signal

Ben & Jerry took a correspondence course to learn how to make ice cream, and opened shop for the first time in May 1978. Then winter came, and people stopped buying ice cream. Jerry describes himself as the least creative and entrepreneurial person he knows -- it's all been Ben -- but he then came up with the company's best marketing idea ever:
PODCBZE. Percent off per degree celsius below zero.

They got through winter by selling to restaurants. Ben thought that people driving around selling stuff had a great job, because they got to drive around listening to music, so they turned Ben into a travelling sales person by kitting up a car with a freezer and a great tape deck. That got them through the next winter. The winter after that, they moved up to an old truck because they weren't able to fit enough ice cream in Ben's car. But soon they were spending more money fixing the truck than they were earning on ice cream. Then Ben got the idea of putting ice cream in pints so they could sell to stores. Then they got a couple of small distributors to start distributing their ice cream; then they got a couple of big distributors to take their product into major markets.

A few distributors were just starting to carry their product when they got an urgent call from the distributors, saying they had to meet. They met near Logan Airport, where the distributors told B&J that Haagen Daaz, which had just been purchased by Pillsbury, had told these distributors that they would no longer sell them Haagen Daaz if they were also selling Ben & Jerry's. Since Haagen Daaz was the distributors' most profitable product, the distributors were going to drop B&J.

This seemed to be a violation of anti-trust law, so B&J thought maybe they'd file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. But they were told the FTC had been Reaganized, so didn't expect that to work. They decided that if they were going to go down, they might as well first take their issue to the public, so they launched the "What's the Dough Boy afraid of?" campaign. Jerry went to Pillsbury

They took out classifieds. Then an airplane banner. Then some signs showing big white pudgy doughboy hands squeezing a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Then they decidced to go to their customers: they printed an 800 number on all points, and when people called in they were invited to leave their name & address. Then B&J sent an action kit to each person with a bumper sticker, a letter to send to the FTC, and a T-shirt offer. (For $10 you could get a "what's the dough boy afraid of?" t-shirt that said "major contributor to the B&J legal defense fund" on the back.)

Started getting a couple hundred calls a week, mostly between midnight and 3am. Eventually got picked up by the media -- New Yorker, Wall Street Journal.

Thanks to the public outcry, Pillsbury/Haagen Daaz backed down, and B&J was able to get distribution, which is what let B&J get distributed across the country.

ARound that time B&J realized they weren't ice cream guys anymore -- they were business men. They were spending time on hiring and firing and accounting. We had grown up in the 60s and had all these negative feelings about business. We didn't want to be a cog in the machine.

Ben ran into Maurice Purpura and told him that we were getting out of business.

Ben said, you know what business does. It spoils the evironment! It exploits workers! It hurts the community!

Maurice said, if you don't like that, why don't you change it?

That had never occurred to us. But we decided to stay with it, and make something we could be proud of. Something good for the community. And that's been the journey since then: could we find a way to integrate social and environmental concerns into the business of the company.

When we first started to do it, there was no blueprint for it. We just started trying different things. There's this idea, this conventional thinking, that if you try to do some good, and also have a for-profit business, it won't work. But if you try to combine them the possibilities are essentially limitless.

I can give some examples. And I can also tell lots of stories that didn't work.

About fourteen of our scoop shops are partnerships that are co-owned by nonprofits. They employ youth who otherwise wouldn't have work. We make just as much money as from other shops.

Ben is the entrepreneurial one. If you'll go to other panels in this workshop you'll hear about qualities of entrepreneurs: they may not work well within structure; don't do well with conventional thinking.

At one point they made Ben take the MMPI (Minnesota personality inventory). Result came back that Ben had unresolved conflicts with authority. Ben has always been the driving force within the company.

Ben likes to combine things that don't usually go together. He hates compartmentalization. Like big chunks of cookies and candy with ice cream. He loves the idea of contrast going together.

It was the same way of having a social mission with a business. Combining things that don't usually go together.

Business schools teach that the purpose of business is to maximize profit. Business exists not only to make money, but to make as much money as we can, without thinking about the larger impact on society.

At B&J we said no that's not ok. Business is a neighbor.

When the business started taking stands on issues that were not just in its own interests.

Business is always advocating for less environmental regulation. A lower minimum wage.

The first issue that Ben & Jerry's addressed was when we came up with a product called the Peace Pop: a chocolate covered ice cream bar. And we decided to use the name of the product and the packaging to suggest that 1% of the military budget would be redirected to peace and understanding activities. This was incredibly controversial within Ben & Jerry's. Typically you use your packaging to talk about what a great product you have.

Ben essentially shoved this down the company's throat. And it was a success. Even people who disagreed on the issue thought it was great we took a stand. And as you may have noticed, the cold war ended not long after. (laughter)

A few years ago B&J's sent some people down to DC with a giant Baked Alaska to protest oil drilling in Alaska.

In the past few years B&J has had a CEO (Walt Freeze) who has undertaken a huge initiative to take B&J's back to its heritage. He feels it's really central to what the business is about. And Unilver, to its credit, has let that happen.

The company has been doing really well. Last year we came out with "American Pie"; apple pie ice cream. On the lid, there was a pie chart showing the federal discretionary budget. Half of it goes to the military. The other half gets split up into all these little slivers like health or job retraining. The package talked about taking some of the defense dept budget that goes to obsolete cold era defense systems and putting it toward human needs. It used the example of maintaining our arsenal of 10,000 nuclear bombs, which experts all agree is more than we need. The company spends about 20 billion dollars maintaining this arsenal.

Unilever acquired B&J because the company had been successful, and they want it to continue to be successful, and they understand that to some degree it's been successful because of the way the company has operated and the values on which it's been based.

Q: What at Oberlin prepared you for starting your business?

Social activism. Breaking rules. Not having to do things in the way they had always been done.

Being at the school when the school shut down over a student strike -- that astounded me. Saying this issue is more important than what we usually say we're here for. I wasn't that involved in activism myself -- I spent the majority of my time playing intramural sports.

Unilever is a $50b company. Partner shops survived the Unilever acquisition and continue. The program is growing slowly the same way the entire franchise scoop shop business expanding.

As a social mission business you have to think about things differently. In addition to the usual business considerations -- which is challenging enough. Just making a business run is hard. And now we ask people to think about something else: social and environmental impact. So for people who don't embrace those values, being asked to think about those concerns makes their job harder. They don't really believe in it. But for people who believe in those values, it's more motivating -- it gives the business a chance to connect with employees and customers and the community. You're connecting with them on the basis of shared values, which is a tremendous motivation.