Gay marriage is legal nationwide, and Ben & Jerry's has just the flavor to capture the sweet taste of the historic moment.
The Vermont-based ice cream shop renamed its staple "Chocolate-Chip Cookie Dough" carton "I dough, I dough" in a chocolatey celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court's historic decision to legalize gay marriage nationwide on Friday.
SEE ALSO: The best reactions by major companies to the historic gay marriage decision
The pint will be available throughout the summer at participating Ben & Jerry's shops or online through the Human Rights Campaign's website, where proceeds will benefit the equal-rights group.
The hippie-founded ice cream brand has long been an advocate for LGBT rights. In 1989, it became one of the first employers in the state to offer health insurance to same-sex domestic partners. When Vermont legalized gay marriage in 2009, it renamed its "Chubby Hubby" flavor "Hubby Hubby" to mark the occasion.
Major companies rushed to show they were celebrating after the Supreme Court announced a historic ruling legalizing gay marriage across the country on Friday.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court stated Friday morning that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and that states must recognize same-sex marriages performed out of state.
SEE ALSO: Same-sex marriage is the law of the land in America
Company logos were decked out in rainbows and tweets and Facebook posts waxed poetic about equality. Public attitudes toward gay marriage are reaching new heights of acceptance, and connecting a brand to the civil rights landmark is any easy way to add a progressive, socially aware aura and connect a company to the nationwide revelry on a day when President Obama said "America is a place where you can write your destiny."
And with many brands already celebrating Pride month, those multi-colored icons and product-placement scenes of same-sex domestic bliss were likely already on hand for the occasion.
Here's how every business from multinational corporations to bootstrapping startups reacted to the news.
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A rather striking Tillamook ad.
BY TL STANLEY
Everyone in the U.S. has, at one point, taken a deep look at the gelatinous orange slice of "American cheese" and wondered: what exactly about this is "American"?
The Tillamook brand, a farmer-owned dairy co-operative, is poking fun at the well-known grocery staple by launching an advertising and social media campaign to strip the infamous blazing orange cheese food of its “American” name.
The centerpiece of the campaign is a purposely low-tech video featuring cutout artwork of Abraham Lincoln riding a grizzly bear and scornfully holding up a cellophane-wrapped slice of American pasteurized cheese product.
Using stop-motion animation to deliver his anti-fake-food rant, our 16th president berates the concept of “American” cheese while skewering a few waxy yellow slices with a sword.
There are also two other ads to bolster the campaign: George Washington on a bald eagle, surrounded by fire, and, perhaps destined to become a meme, Betsy Ross surfing on a shark.
Without directly calling out competitors like Kraft, Tillamook and its Los Angeles-based ad agency 72andSunny are asking consumers to declare their independence from processed cheese, just in time for Fourth of July picnics and parties.
For the record, the Federal Drug Administration does not allow Kraft or other companies to label American cheese as “cheese,” since it’s made with less than 51% real cheese and contain ingredients like sodium citrate, gelatin and lactic acid. American cheese commonly carries the description, “processed cheese product” or “pasteurized cheese food” on its package. Some store brands use the term “imitation” or “prepared” cheese and others, preferring to be even more vague, call their products “sandwich slices.”
American cheese isn’t worthy of the moniker because there’s little in the way of cheese or American quality in the product – it’s downright un-American! — says the cheeky campaign, which asks people to sign a petition to the White House at Tillamook.com. (It will need 100,000 signatures to get a response from Washington).
“We wanted to do something disruptive, a little unexpected,” said Kelly Schoeffel, 72andSunny’s co-head of strategy/group strategy director on Tillamook.
She goes on to throw some epic dairy shade: “And we assume that the founding fathers would not be psyched to have the American name on packages of sludge pumped into plastic wrap.”
A Tillamook ad from its "Un-American Cheese" campaign.
IMAGE: TILLAMOOK
The July 4th weekend is the high point for cheese during the year, as more than 153 million Americans are expected to have barbecues and picnics, according to the National Retail Federation. BIGresearch estimates that consumers will spend at least $6.2 billion on food for the holiday, including upwards of $86 million on cheese alone.
“We wanted to bring up the issue of real vs. unreal food at a culturally relevant moment, like when people are shopping for and celebrating a holiday,” said John Russell, Tillamook’s chief marketing officer. “They may not realize what processed cheese is, but we want them to think about it. And we believe something called American should be 100% natural, and American cheese is definitely not.”
Tillamook has become more aggressive in general in its marketing, hiring 72andSunny last year and debuting some food porn-ish ads this spring with slogans like, “Dairy with standards – not artificial growth hormones.”
A new ad for Tillamook.
IMAGE: TILLAMOOK
In doing so, they’re part of a larger trend in the food world where organic marketers aren’t the only ones touting good-for-you ingredients. At the same time, a number of major restaurant chains and food companies have said they will switch to antibiotic-free meats and rid their menus and products of genetically modified organisms.
This week, General Mills announced it will remove artificial colorings and flavors from its iconic cereals like Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs by 2017. And a growing list of companies such as Taco Bell, Tyson Foods, Pizza Hut, Nestle, Kraft, Panera and Subway have promised to cut additives and chemicals from their products.
It’s part of their attempt to appeal to health conscious Millennials and Gen X parents, said Jane Buckingham, CEO of trend forecasting and media firm Trendera, but it won’t guarantee sales. As more companies offer non-GMO, all natural, trans-fat-free and organic products, the commitment to better quality food will become the price of entry in the food business. And brands will need to carry through on their promises, she said, as Chipotle, Sweetgreen and others have successfully done.
“Today's consumer is savvy when it comes to food and very careful to check claims,” Buckingham said. “If it’s not who the company really is – an authentic, real food brand promoting its lifestyle and healthy products — then the consumer will know it.”
Ello first grabbed the attention of the tech world last fall by billing itself as the "anti-Facebook" social network, railing against the Facebook's targeted advertising and offering up a bare-bones ad-free alternative. But as with most aspiring Facebook challengers, its spotlight dimmed as quickly as it began.
Now, in a bid to reclaim some of that buzz, the social media upstart is buying its own ads from its Goliath competitor — and turning them into winking jabs at Facebook's digging into its users' personal data.
SEE ALSO: Social network Ello raises $5 million, still hates comparisons to Facebook
With tongue-in-cheek taglines like “They told us you’re single in NYC” and “We paid for you to see this ad,” Ello's first-ever advertising campaign intends to use the personal data that Facebook supplies to its advertisers to make Facebookers well aware of how much the social network knows about their lives.
So if Facebook has sensed that you're an avid hiker, you might see an image of a forest trail with a banner that says "Backcountry, not ads." Or if you've noted an interest in photography, Ello will appeal that "Photography is better without ads."
IMAGE: COURTESY OF ELLO
In the coming months, Ello plans to roll out the campaign to other social networks like Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest and even some physical billboards and street posters.
The company's strategy appears to punch up to Facebook in order to get a slice of the same attention.
Despite the paid potshots and the company's loud criticism of Facebook's advertising tactics, Ello claims it wants to end the comparisons to its behemoth rival. The startup, which is registered under the socially responsible label of a "benefit corporation," hopes to position itself as an artsy minimalist platform that caters to creative types.
"The media created this catfight last fall — the catfight amongst social networks — positioning us as the anti-," Rene Alegria, Ello's chief marketing officer, told Mashable earlier this year. "That's not what we stand for ... What we're working toward is galvanizing the creative community."
In the months following the mass drop-off in interest after its stint as a viral sensation, Ello has been quietly making moves. In February, it hired its first chief marketing officer to revamp its image, and a few months later, it raised $5 million to bring its total funding to $11 million. Earlier this week, it launched its first iOS app.
For years, Madison Avenue has worked out of the same playbook: men are beer-swilling, BBQ-tending couch-potatos; women stern, attractive mothers juggling household chores, boys play sports, girls play with dolls, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum.
That's a massive oversimplification, of course, but the point is that when advertisers need to get a message through to a mass audience, it's easy to fall back on certain instantly recognizable clichés, or play to the aspirations of the perceived everyman or everywoman — if not their insecurities.
But this week in southern France, amidst the endless schmoozing and champagne-fueled yacht parties of one of the industry's biggest happenings of the year, it's clear that the tides have begun to turn against these time-worn tactics.
SEE ALSO: The Caitlyn Jenner paradox: Are brands ready to talk about gender identity?
For one thing, some of the most buzzed-about commercials of the year at the Cannes Lions international ads festival purposefully set out to throw a wrench in them.
Proctor & Gamble Always's highly-acclaimed #LikeAGirl campaign, which turned a commonplace gendered insult on its head, has already racked up a slew of awards. Underarmour's "I Will What I Want" video of Giselle slugging and kicking away at a punching bag as Twitter insults illuminate the walls around her is also considered a likely judge favorite.
"I feel like almost every conversation I'm in here, 'Like a Girl' comes up," Deutsch LA president Kim Getty told Mashable.
This year also marked the debut of a new award category: the Glass Lion, which celebrates campaigns that take on gender inequality or prejudice. The progressive-minded accolade was added at the urging of Facebook COO and Leanin.org founder Sheryl Sandberg, a champion of workplace gender diversity.
"We know that the messages that our industry puts out have a tremendous impact on culture and...influence human behavior and the way people see each other and themselves," said Senta Slingerland, Cannes Lions Festival's director of brand strategy. "So celebrating work that is trying to represent gender in a more realistic and progressive way can also have a real impact on culture."
Sandberg first floated the idea after speaking at the festival's "See It Be It" event, a program that provides resources and training for promising female creatives.
That event took aim at a related gender disparity issue within the industry, which is that for decades, real-life Mad Men have been exactly that — men.
The industry has obviously evolved leagues past the casual chauvinism on display in AMC's 1960s period piece. But its legacy isn't entirely gone, and in the creative departments and upper echelons of Madison Avenue, women remain scarce. Just 11% of all winners of industry-wide creative awards last year were women — up from 4% a decade ago
"In an industry where the default setting is always male, where the number of female creatives coming up on the stage tonight to accept awards is tiny compared to the number of men...For me, the Glass Lion is a perfect opportunity for self-examination," Jury president Cindy Gallop said on stage while announcing the winners.
In addition to the inherent virtue of workplace equity, the thinking here is that more diversity in the office can lead to more diversity in the output, so the twin problems go hand in hand.
Getty said it often takes an extra dose of creativity and originality to push beyond the gender-norm roles and stale plotlines that often infect ads and render a story with real depth. She hopes the high-profile success stories in this department will serve as a beacon for other advertisers to follow suit in tackling these themes.
"I think that the best advertising helps to drive cultural conversations," Getty said. "We're making culture as much as we're reflecting it."
The Glass Lion's big winner this year was a campaign for Procter & Gamble India's Whisper brand of sanitary napkins that playfully debunked a superstition that pickles will rot if menstruating women touch them.
After the Grand Prix, seven of the other 165 entrants took home a glass statue, including #LikeAGirl.
"Together, we helped ignite a cultural movement and showed that doing something #LikeAGirl isn’t an insult," Judy John, Leo Burnett Canada CEO and lead creative behind the campaign said in an email to Mashable after winning the award. "It means amazing things. This film is proof of the power of creativity and the power of results and I’m proud to be a part of it all."
Pampers wants to highlight the way babies can brighten the days of everyone around them.
The diaper company's new ad, entitled "Better for Baby" is a two-and-a-half-minute montage of warm smiles, thoughtful gestures and silly faces that babies elicit not only from their own parents but from construction workers, businesspeople and passers-by going about their day.
The spot kicks off Pampers' #BetterForBaby campaign, which highlights the brand's various charity partnerships and efforts towards protecting premature babies, donating products to families in need, preventing maternal and newborn tetanus, and reducing the environmental impact of its diapers. Pampers is also calling on social media users to add their own pledges for helping babies using the campaign's hashtag.
SEE ALSO: Facebook shows the proud, sweet side of black fatherhood in America
The ad was inspired by market research that involved visiting with hundreds of moms around the country.
"One of the consistent themes from the conversations with moms was the powerful impact that their babies had as positive change agents in their lives," Pampers spokesperson Heather Valento told Mashable.
Pampers has had some success with similar pushes to engage with parents online in the past, Valento said. One of its most notable hits was a 2014 campaign in which Pampers highlighted parent-submitted videos of their babies dancing as part of a contest to win a spot on a commercial. The company then capped it off with two baby dance parties in New York and Los Angeles.
