Ben Cohen

And the purpose of those things is to make customers feel good about your company.

I think the reality is that just by serving the needs of society, by addressing social problems that...

People want addressed.

What you create is this values alignment, this relationship with your customers based on shared values.

That's the strongest possible relationship you can create with your customers.

And it's very, very durable.

You know, versus...

the advertising mode which is oh let's come up with a funny ad let's come up with a cute ad let's come up with an emotional ad and it it gets the customer to laugh or to you know maybe maybe feel good about the company but it's ephemeral it's not a deep connection and shared values is an incredibly deep connection

And the other thing to understand is that you act on your values and not everybody agrees with it.

You know, I've always said that there's no sense taking a stand on something if everybody already agrees with it.

You don't need to take that stand.

Business people, you know, traditional business people are always concerned, well, I'm going to offend somebody.

You know, the reality is that your business is never going to get 100% market share.

You know, Ben & Jerry's might have 5% of the population that consumes our products.

That's enough.

You know, that's a billion-dollar corporation.

That's amazing.

So you're not going to appeal to everybody, but those people that you do appeal to have this incredibly strong connection

with your brand?

I mean, it's both.