Haagen-Dazs vs. Ben & Jerry's: Battle of the Brands

Posted Apr 13th 2007 11:40AM by Sarah GilbertSarah Gilbert RSS Feed
Filed under: Products and Services, Consumer Experience, Unilever ADR (UL), Battle of the Brands

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This post is part of our Battle of the Brands feature. Let us know which brand you prefer, and watch out for more Battle of the Brands posts.

If you like ice cream, you're probably already in one camp or the other. Few people claim to love Ben & Jerry's peacenik-y, tied-up-and-twisted flavors equally as well as the upper-crust uber-richness of Haagen-Dazs' highly-crafted premium varieties.

Oddly, though both have such strong brand identity and have created corporate cultures that seem pure and fiercely independent, both are tiny units of much larger (and unsexy) food companies. Ben & Jerry's was acquired by Unilever plc (ADR) (NYSE: UL) in 2000, while Haagen-Dazs was acquired by Pillsbury in 1983, now a unit of the quite pedantic General Mills, Inc. (NYSE: GIS).

How is it that two ice cream companies that share so many similarities -- the same size and shape package, the same commitment to quality of ingredients, the same fierce attention to (and careful culling of) flavor rosters, the same expectations (that you'll eat a good portion of the pint in one sitting, probably alone), the same prices -- be so different? To an outsider who understood nothing of the singular pleasure of dipping a spoon into a fresh-from-the-freezer pint of a favorite flavor, well, you'd think the brands were interchangeable; that a given consumer would choose one over the other based only on the weekly specials at one's neighborhood grocery store. Au contraire, or as they say in Vermont, no way man.

I want to say that it's all about the relative brands' aura; are you the sort who shops at a co-op and attends political rallies, or are you more likely to be found driving your Mercedes to the boutique gourmet market -- hurry! -- you've got tickets to the ballet later? Sure, the kid with the "make love not war" sign is eating Cherry Garcia and the woman in Prada heels is eating Haagen-Dazs sorbet. But that's not really it, I don't think. After all, it's telling that both brands are ubiquitous in the corner convenience stores in my mostly working-class neighborhood.

It's all about the taste. How do you like your ice cream? I like a smooth, rich, gelato-like ice cream, where each mouthful is lusciously filling and even my spoon seems elegant, just because it's touching the creamy stuff. My favorite flavor? Haagen-Dazs coffee. I have been known to purchase and eat a pint of the stuff in the space of a few hours.

Ben & Jerry's is an entirely different experience, what with its widely variant-sized mix-ins (I've found chunks of Heath Bar bigger than my spoon, for instance), its focus on wild combinations with passionately silly names and themes. Heck, Ben & Jerry's invented the concept of using hippie celebrities to sell its brands, and paradoxically, it worked. If you like a mouthful of brownie-banana-cherry-caramel-fudge cow swirl, well, Ben & Jerry's is the brand for you.

I certainly won't turn down a pint of Ben & Jerry's if it shows up in my freezer. But Haagen-Dazs, despite the formidable conceit of its name (the ice cream's inventor, a guy named "Reuben" from the Bronx, made up the words), is perfection in a little round carton. Its milk may not come from cute black-and-white cows in a pasture outside of Burlington, but boy do those Yankees mix it up right.

Be sure to vote in our poll for Ben & Jerry's or Haagen-Dazs as your preferred brand, and let us know why you love it in the comments. Results of all Battle of the Brands match-ups coming soon.

Tags: Ben and Jerry's, Cherry Garcia, corporate culture, CorporateCulture, General Mills, GIS, Haagen-Dazs, ice cream, IceCream, Pillsbury, premium ice cream, sorbet, UL, Unilever

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