Ben & Jerry’s prides itself on making great ice cream with the best ingredients. They recently upped the ante by converting all their ingredients to Fair Trade Certified. This move complemented their corporate values well, but only 30% of the public was even aware of fair trade.

The Solution

As active tweeters with a vibrant community, Ben & Jerry’s knew that many tweeters weren’t using all of their allotted 140 characters. They developed their Fair Tweets campaign around this fact. Participants who wrote a short tweet such as “Loving the new dog park” would automatically have a message plus link from Ben & Jerry’s. The full tweet would read something like:

Loving the new dog park. You know what’s fair? Putting leftover Twitter characters to good use.” #FairTrade. http://fair.es/051 #FairTweets

Ben & Jerry’s bought no advertising to promote the campaign. Their Chunksplunker email club, owned digital spaces and external partners were all that was needed. They also worked with likeminded companies like Honest Tea, Green Mountain Coffee and Seventh Generation to help spread the word to their own networks.

The Results

1. 43,600 site visits from over 100 countries

2. 518,000 Twitter characters contributed

3. Over 1,000 blog mentions

Read more about the campaign at PROMO Magazine

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WOMMA salutes those who use WOM and social media for good. If you’re in that group, submit your case study to this year’s WOMMYs for the Cause Marketing Award. More info here

Ben & Jerry’s is a WOMMA member.