Our challenge was to help sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to consumers in Japan. Ben & Jerry’s had launched once before in Japan 10 years ago and failed. The failed launch has been documented in many business school case studies, and one reason for the failure was the lack of understanding of the B&J’s brand in Japan the first time round.

As our first project with B&J’s in Japan we wanted to help them identify a social cause they believe in, create PR buzz around their product in the market, and increase product trial.

We built a social media engagement allowing people to pledge to vote in return for free ice cream. The result was a hugely successful campaign generating positive online buzz with influential technology and news media outlets, and many millions of free media impressions. All with zero media investment.

The plan was approved 2 weeks before it was due to go live, so there was practically no time to prepare. However during this time we created a user flow of how the campaign would be experienced by participants in Japan, developed the simple website and the functionality using a Facebook API.

We designed all elements and wrote copy that we believed would be fun enough to encourage people to share & like the posts they saw, but serious enough to know that the idea behind the plan was genuine.

We also decorated a truck with the cones-for-votes campaign visuals and sent it around polling station areas in Tokyo. There was no time to allow for any changes in the campaign, and although there were some potential web-hosting issues encountered, the pressing deadline and inability to delay the project pushed all members (client + agency) to find fast solutions.

Total unique visitors to the campaign site: 75k

Total page likes: 39k

Total number of pledges: 8.9k

Approximate Facebook impressions (unpaid): 5.2MM

This result was beyond the clients’ expectations and resulted in immediate follow up campaigns to capitalize on the positive sentiment that was experienced as a result of the cones-for-votes campaign.

The results were positive enough to ensure all future campaign proposals were inclusive of social media plans, and the client subsequently launched a local Twitter account to be able to respond to the positive comments being made by customers after the campaign. Site traffic data is also mentioned above, but the biggest “win” for the client in this case was the fact that the online conversations taking place around the campaign for the first time in Japan accurately reflected an understanding of Ben & Jerry’s brand values.