The company should stick to making ice cream. Credit: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images
To better understand the era we are living through, it might help to first understand the nature of the ‘wokescreen’. Like those billowy emissions of dry-ice in a 1980s pop video, this device is useful if you want to hide bad and egregious behaviour from public view.
It is, essentially, a new iteration of an old rule: the one stating that the person commonly to be found complaining most vociferously about a particular vice is the one disproportionately likely to be guilty of said vice.
Through decades past, this rule applied to people who were literally in the clerical class. It was, for instance (see the late Cardinal Keith O’Brien), the priest or bishop who denounced homosexuality in the most vociferous terms who would turn out to have their own peculiar interpretation of ‘the laying on of hands’, tending to revolve around the knees of young male seminarians.
And there is sense in this of course. Through overt displays of moral opprobrium, the petitioner imagines that everyone’s attention will be diverted. Through stressing their virtue overmuch, however, such people raise a perceptible flag to anyone with an eye for human hypocrisy.
Today, of course, the clerical class is not the clergy. It is generally a rich, massively protected, metropolitan and often corporate or corporate-backed class which poses as the defender and then enforcer of all the easiest, least-controversial causes of the time. These shift, naturally, but today a person who wishes to cloak themselves in virtue will talk up their ‘anti-racism’ credentials; will talk about ‘feminism’ as though women’s rights have only just occurred to them; they will stress their green credentials; and of course they will rush to the defence of anyone who claims to identify as a tree or a hedgerow and assert that said person’s right to so identify is not just ancient and long-established but biologically incontrovertible. All give off immense warning-signs.
Among individuals who have recently come a cropper of this tendency has been the (to my mind) gratingly fake American talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen got a certain amount of credit at the woke bank years before anyone else, by coming out as a lesbian. Back then, it was claimed that she risked her whole career by doing this, though happily her career only went even higher into the stratosphere. After all the publicity, 42 million people watched the episode of her sitcom in which she came out.
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SubscribeI am deeply disappointed with Unilever. Until now I have always looked to multinational corporations for moral guidance.
That truly made me laugh out loud! I thank you Warren.
Me too!
i felt the same when a child with my priest
all they want to do is f u
It’s the old thing of corporate responsibility gone mad. Corporations realised at some point you could get brownie points (and customers) by appearing to do good things in the local community – even if they carried on with the same old sh*t that they always did. This applies to the personal branding of ‘celebs’ too.
This has developed into what my mother termed as ‘do as I say and not as I do’. The corporations have now attempted to get people to believe the impossible – that they really are on the side of the downtrodden and have the best interests of all people at heart. It truly is a cloud of sparkly unicorn fart – lovely until it disperses and the reality is revealed.
That said a group of terribly ‘woke’ youngsters probably run the Twitter and thought it would be a great way to become the upstanding guardians of social justice (wending their way to Twitter sainthood of course) and didn’t realise who they actually worked for and just how much sh*t went on behind the scenes.
The moral of the story is check how much grime is behind your fridge before you give a lecture on household tips.
As J Peterson says, SJW’s – first clean your room!
It is worth pointing out that this kind of marketing is ‘Cannes-bait’, It’s a shoe in for awards and awards mean money
Ben and Jerrys make brownie icecream, they will have to rely on that for points next time
Actually, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is terrible. It is sooooo packed with junk food like cookie dough (ugh!) and chemical sweeteners that it turns your stomach just to read the labels.
CSR was about beach cleaning or park cleaning not about thought cleaning
Ignore these corporate idiots and buy from someone else – effectively canceling the idiots who work there
It would be much easier for the rest of us if you wrote out “corporate social responsibility” in full. It took me quite a long time to work out what “CSR” stood for.
People are waking up to that, albeit slowly.
Brilliant expose – thank you Douglas. Please keep the great work up to highlight the utterly nauseating ‘wokeness’ of the many hypocritical, illiberal, fascist, mendacious and inane organisations and individual creatures, especially the twitterati. Let me throw in the divisive, discriminatory, racist and profoundly insulting ‘BLM movement’ which is already proving counter-productive and continues to do so.
Working in Advertising as I do, I know the B&J tweet was not dashed off by some intern. Tweets these days are briefed in to the social media agency, the copy is written and then discussed and tweaked. The planners decide the optimum GMT to post it and what hashtags will deliver the best engagement etc. Then it is signed off at a high level.
I suspect that this one will work for their demographic, validating their decision to buy an expensive product. It is not a self-indulgent luxury, but a statement of virtue you see.
It may be a wokescreen too, but primarily it is marketing.
Absolutely. No company is going to let anything go on its Twitter account without having it triple checked by bosses
Signed off at a high level … yes, and some t**t thought it was a good idea … sad.
Product aimed at the reasonably affluent who want those fleeing, er, France to be allowed into the UK secure in the knowledge that the migrants won’t be housed too nearby…
Logged in an will probably never be back here, but yeah I thought the exact same thing. “Fleeing France”.
France is clearly a dreadful and racist dump, where non-whites of all shades are at risk of being lynched or, even worse, being insulted by rude, white Frenchmen. Obviously they all need to flee desperately to this crowded island of liberty, full of highly educated and very rich people who welcome them… into poorer people’s neighbourhoods.
Interesting. Where would they get their information for identifying their target demographic – do they know for example what the current purchasing profile is. From there do they decide which other demographic to target? I’m interested because I would have bought their ice-cream previously but not now. Do they factor in losing customers as well as gaining new?
I have never understood why the Brits cannot produce decent commercial ice cream. How hard can it be? There are many decent brands in the USA, such as Breyer’s, Brigham’s, Hood ice cream, and many others. But in the UK apparently it is the awful Ben and Jerry’s or nada. When I lived in London in the last century the only ice cream available was a kind of flat brick thing that tasted mainly of the cardboard it was packaged in. In the land of clotted cream, this ice cream lacuna is truly weird. Just go and get a Cuisinart automatic ice cream maker. Dead simple, and you will finally know what good ice cream is supposed to taste like.
No doubt your description is correct re: the PR process, but let’s face it – it AWFUL business policy. Why polarize your potential consumers?! It’s lunacy. I do react to the leftist BS – I haven’t walked into a Starbucks in over a decade….and looks like B&J Cherry’s Garcia will never again touch my lips either.
sure -but they will lose sales to those who loved Cherry Garcia fo years – but will not like the vilage idiot stance
See ya BJ
Yes -and smartly timed for the middle of a heatwave in the UK when they need to get their product to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Deeply, deeply cynical.
Sadly, most marketing meets I’ve been in on are so far up themselves that they often forget completely about the real story.
This is a classic case of marketing wokescreen, conceived and created by a bevy of self-promoting incompetents.
Good to see them called out this time, even if they often get away with it.
Ben and Jerry’s have to many chocolate choices and not much else.
Apart from that who cares what they think?
Remember the days were companies just sold you products by saying how good they were?
Does not seem that long ago but also a lifetime ago.
This new millennium has sent the western world crazy
Ben + Jerry’s when it was still run by Ben + Jerry was just as bad or possibly even worse. Pre-social media, but it’s just carrying on a long tradition of this. In the states they are the #1 brand. I don’t buy it, thought their SJW gimmick was stupid 30 years ago.
What is SJW? Thanks
Social Justice Warrior
until they made their millions – but the infantalised idiots still but into their twatter feed
I know, I know its all serious stuff and Douglas is a gem for artfully articulating what we all know to be true.
But it have to report, sadly, that it was the use of the ‘twatter feed’ that stood out for me.
Brilliant and well done John.
Full disclosure, I am a Laurel and Hardy, Young Ones etc. fan
cheers Steve
5 stars. You raise my hopes every time you write, Douglas, that some day the world of MSM and social media will wake up to this idiocy and treat it publicly with the contempt it deserves.
Agreed.
Great demolition job!
Nothing surprises about the big corporates of the world!! Self interested profit making machines that pretend to be concerned about the welfare, health of the people that buy thier products. Their actions will always show their true colours. About time they started to understand that they cannot fool everyone and should consider contributing to this world instead of taking from it and abusing it!
All the more reason for corporations and businesses to stay the hell out of cultural/social conversations.
This is what will continue to happen if we want to keep playing this dumb game where we all flex our virtue as if we are without blemish, and then dig through the “racist origins” of absolutely everything from statues to “the scientific method” (although we can ignore minimum wage laws and planned parenthood, as their racist beginnings have been redeemed, conveniently.)
Funny how most of this stuff was worked out thousands of years ago…
Sidenote on Ellen”I live in LA and have a few friends in the film/tv industry as crew. They have worked on her show and experienced her wrath firsthand. It’s been well known in their circles for years.
She always come across as an arrogant self important bay itch to me too. Can’t stand the woman personally, very annoying indeed. The higher they climb eh?
This should be read alongside Mr Murray’s piece about the creepy male feminist. Very funny.
‘Beta Males’, a great example of which is ‘Beta Male Biden’
We started down this road the day that businesses felt the need to have a “Mission Statement” that went beyond telling the public that they produced a good and useful product and instead spoke of “values”.
Not just businesses: some years ago, we noted that a council-owned crematorium in our area had just proudly produced a ‘mission statement’.
‘No-one’s ever yet come back to complain’, possibly?
Wasn’t the one that was, I think rather sensibly in a fact, going to use the heat it generated to heat the neighbouring municipal swimming pool was it?
Did it carry the strap-line, “People are just dying to see our new Crematorium facilities!”?
‘We never left anyone on top yet’
Yes. How I loathe ‘mission statements’ and the like. And now my pet hate seems to be the never ending stream of public service announcements when at train stations, on trains and similar -all of which profess the same ‘we really care’ message, delivered however in quite threatening passive aggressive authoritarian tones, basically really saying ‘we told you -now if you mess up it’s your fault, because we care’. I find it sinister and sickening.
And paying their fair share of taxes. Right? No offshoring, right?
Don’t make me laugh.
Lesson #1 for corporations:
‘Your job is to maximise returns for the shareholders’
Lesson #2:
‘Do anything and everything legal to maximise returns, especially if the actions are cheap’
Lesson #3:
‘Take no unnecessary risks’
Unilever is simply llining the pockets of invisible shareholders using gullible internet targets. It will never lead any discussion (risky) it will only follow trends.
Oh dear ! Is this B&J’s Ratner moment ?
It’s lousy ice cream, from day one. The power of advertising/virtue signalling!
Yes, B&J even tastes ‘corporate’ as of late, so buy from a local maker instead.
Yes full of stale bits of bread – disgusting.
Another fantastic essay by Douglas Murray. Thanks! Over my adult lifetime, I’ve noticed the same thing …. the most racist people project their racism onto soft targets …. the biggest over-spenders of borrowed money often criticize people for spending too much of their own money! Incredible!
One of this woke, ‘anti-racist’ corporation’s big-sellers across Asia is their recently renamed ‘fair and lovely’ skin cream, a skin-lightening product, sold on the premise that whiter skin is more appealing than darker skin.
Isn’t this linked more to status as anything, i.e. paler skin. If I recall correctly, pale to white skin was considered higher class in England during the Middle Ages because it meant you weren’t a peasant working outside in the fields. Having tanned skin meant you were poor and had to work outside.
In the sixties, tanned skin meant you could afford a foreign holiday.
I suspect the desire for paler skin in Asia is a status thing just like the upper classes in England.
Yes, partly that, but it also has racial origins, as for example in India: the northern pale Aryan invaders compared to the conquered dark Dravidians whom they pushed south. Of course this correlates with your status theory anyway, because it was the Dravidians who were working outside to serve their Aryan overlords.
It’s very funny that, according to the present narrative, “white” people are the “white supremacists”, when forms of it exist everywhere in the world, from Asia to Africa, as anyone will find if they step out of the “racist” West for a bit.
At 8am this morning the caption photograph for this essay was a benign Jersey cow.
An hour later it has been replaced by an Ice Cream van, it what looks like a desert, just after a 20megaton Nuclear bomb has been dropped, some distance away.
Why the change?
It better represents the wasteland that is Ben & Jerry’s mental landscape.
Truth is that Capitalism wants migrants no matter how they get here. The Left are simple minded re the issue and are easily played. Didn’t Alistair Campbell admit in his autobiography that he Blair and Brown wanted an influx of migrants so that uK capitalism would benefit from a flexible cheap labour force to undermine unions’ aims and help boost the GDP?
So many of today’s issues have been exacerbated by social media and seem to involve a self-righteous commentator with little self knowledge.
“
One of this woke, ‘anti-racist’ corporation’s big-sellers across Asia is
their recently renamed ‘fair and lovely’ skin cream, a skin-lightening
product, sold on the premise that whiter skin is”
Wait a minute wait a mintue wait a minute.
I think Johnson and Johnson has spiked a similar product of theirs. So if I want to color my hair, will the company that produces my hair coloring agent be shamed into ceasing producing the PRODUCT THAT I WANT because of ageism? Will L’Oreal be shamed out of producing hair products for straightening kinky hair despite the fact that hteir customers WANT THESE PRODUCTS? I am totally aghast as the patronizing assumptions behind these shaming campaigns. Be certain that if customers cannot get safe, tested products to produce the beautify effects that they desire, they will try unsafe products instead. This is like sending women back to back-street abortioanist. Oh, and hey, waht about Viagra. Maybe those over-the-hill old guys should be instucted to learn some more effective techniques of satisifying a woman, and thus their ego, than with an artifically stiffed-up member.
While I’m here let’s give a thought to the implicit anti-woman attitude of most of these shaming campaigns as opposed to no shaming for products aimed at male vanity.
Just cut it out. If I wnat to lighten my skin, change the shape of my nose, change my hair color from gray to red I dont’ need you to tell me that is not PC. Becasue that is exactly what this shaming of the skin-lightener manufacturers is. So mind your own effing business.
I am deeply disappointed with Unilever. until now I have always taken looked to multi-national corporations for moral guidance.
So I’m booking my tickets to the Berwick on Tweed Fringe Festival 2021 now before the rush…
Ah! The wokescreen! Or the haze that the WOnKErs create in the mistaken belief that it hides their imperfections from the world.
But take this article: skin whitening products are ‘racist beauty products’.
Really??? Not in Thailand they’re not!! They are in just as high demand as tanning products are in the WOnKEr west.
If skin tanning products are not ‘racist beauty products’ for white people then skin whitening products are not ‘racist beauty products’ for Asian people!
Is this writer trying to infer that Asians are too stupid to know what they want? Is he trying to infer that Asians need to be re-educated by the superior moral mores of white elites desperately trying to darken their skin?
It would seem that even the best of us can be caught hiding in a ‘wokescreen’.
Not familiar with the term: wonker. Please define ….
Otherwise known as a Shrieker.
Normally, white, middle class, self obsessed, virtue signalling, cretin, of limited intelligence and vitriolic, nay spiteful nature.
To be excoriated with extreme prejudice, at every possible opportunity, if I may be so bold?
It’s a portmanteau of woke & wanker.
Woke/Wanker
Having just read about the various chemical nasties in what ‘was’ Fair and Lovely, I’ve deleted my previous comment.
Absolutely. Very patronizing comment from Douglas Murray. Glad someone else noticed this and called him out more articulately than I managed.
Unilever,EU lovers said brexit ”We’ll leave London” June 2016 June 2019 ”London such a great place to do business”…They owe Uk Government £600million in back Taxes..typical hypocritical corporate fascism…see; The origins of Common market.
Yes Warren, we need space for our comedians to return and take all this stuff apart. Please come back George. (Carlin).
Of course the millenial morons getting paid every month, think spouting this nonsense is fine, without a care in the world how their pay is sourced, how their iphone is built or how the child labourers are treated who make their clothes
Their village is missing them
I stoped buying their product on their first tweet, never again.
“ingredients are sourced from factory dairy farms and some of the products contain traces of glysophate, a weed killer.”
… which is harmless to mammals.
Glyphosate not glysophate. 🙂
Aha, I guess my own comment calling out Douglas Murray for his patronizing comments has been censored. Maybe because I used the word Viagra???
Free advertising for Ben and Jerry’s by picking a high profile Tw@tter fight.
Sure some people might avoid Ben and Jerry’s now as a direct result, offsetting perhaps others who might like them more from their woke ‘kudos’.
However the vast majority who don’t really care or have half paid attention will have the idea of Ben and Jerry’s planted in their conscious.
Ever considered a return to journalism, Douglas?
He’s not left journalism.
I don’t disagree with the sentiment of the piece, exactly, but it comes off as less analytical and more ranting. I could summarize it as such: “Ellen is an overrated lesbian. Lesbian, lesbian, lesbian. People in glass ice cream parlors shouldn’t throw stones.”
I get it. I think corporations are single-minded, profit-generating apparatuses devoid of conscience. Corporate social responsibility is a farce and companies cynically employ it as a PR and marketing tool. As Clay Routledge wrote: “We are living in an era of woke capitalism in which companies pretend to care about social justice to sell products to people who pretend to hate capitalism.” The lady doth protest too much, etc. etc.
I can appreciate the discussion of hypocrisy, but it mostly comes off as contemptuous ad hominem to me. While these concrete examples help illustrate the phenomenon, I think it would be useful to cite some sort of evidence that the issue is widespread. Obviously the argument cannot be as simplistic as “those who strongly oppose particular conduct must covertly engage in said conduct.” So how are we to discern the earnest advocate from the unprincipled pretender? Celebrities and corporations are certainly suspect and should be subject to enhanced scrutiny, to begin with. And, as the author says, those who embrace the easiest, least controversial causes of the time deserve a second look. Still, individuals have all different motives for embracing the present trends and it’s not always an effort to divert attention from non-conforming behavior.
No, it’s definitely a “thing”, a la Jimmy Savile, Justin Trudeau, Cyril Smith et al, only it now extends to the corporate world.
He’s merely saying that virtue signalling in the world of business should be a red flag, not that it constitutes evidence of wrong doing.
Whilst I have no sympathy with the dimwits that put together those social media posts, I do have a certain sympathy for Unilever itself. Almost certainly, nobody that actually runs the company would consider doing what the PR department did. It was probably delegated by an older person unfamiliar with Twitter to a young woke something who let his/her imagination run away. I will bet though that that young person’s career will be going nowhere.
To run a global conglomerate like Unilever, the top brass will delegate all they can and just focus on the high level stuff. Anyway I was a shareholder and still like what they do, and do understand that every listed company will always have a disgruntled someone somewhere with an ambulance chasing lawyer running up some lawsuit or another. I would really like to see someone from HMG doing something like that here though. Now that would send a message. I suspect that won’t happen either.
As for the whitening products sold out here where I live in the Far East. Every day is 34 degrees and sunny so people have dark skin which many people find unattractive so Unilever as every other maker of personal products makes these products which sell. Don’t mention the toothpaste though! The most popular one is called Darlie and it was only a few years ago that the ‘L’ was changed from ‘K’. Really. It’s a Colgate product if you want to check.
On CV itself (and I know this isn’t an article about that) I was playing golf this week with a prominent local doctor who trained in Scotland before coming back here to train seemingly every leading local doctor. We were talking about CV and genetics as he is an endochronologist specialising in diabetes (a big disease here) and talked about CV being considered a racist disease in the UK because it targets BAME people. He pointed out that everyone here is BAME and virtually nobody has it (zero cases for over 100 days where I am).
You’re in Malaysia I guess probably Penang
The wonderful Eastern and Oriental, the O&E of Empire days and the best
G & T’s north of KL!
Very rare is something on corporate Social Media (that includes Charities) not thought out before hand. While the top people at this company didn’t personally ok it, they set a tone and agreed to a marketing plan.
Gillette Razors, owned by P + G last year or year before came out with a commercial on “Toxic Masculinity” There was a 3% drop in the business. Doesn’t seem like a lot. They sell about $7,500,000,000 a year. I’m sure it blew over for the most part. I was never on board the Gillette train. I’m a DORCO from South Korea brand guy.
What is the doc’s theory as to why CV is zero in BAME there? Interesting
Honestly I spotted Ellen as terrible boss right away. I’ve seen a few. They shout and bawl and bully and defend it by saying they are ‘passionate’ and ‘just want things to be done right’.
I.e. narcissists.
Curious how the neutral term ‘passionate’ has been taken over by the Left and is used as an alternative to reason and logic.
But as a Vulcan, me and my race are extremely passionate about our use of reason and logic. This passion is of course, illogical captain.
The real world is full of the need for real time compromise but forgiveness in the flow of adult conversation is apparently unlawful now.
Even Pret advertise the fact they are ‘passionate about coffee’ What the Hell do they do kiss the paper cups each mooring?
And obviously the same logic applies to those who loudly protest hypocrisy, … .
It was a hit job on Ben and Jerry’s not a piece about the prevalence of “wokescreening” by big corporations, but a piece about “wokescreening” by Ben and Jerry’s and its corporate owner. It didn’t need analysis, all it needed was facts, which it provided. Nice try, corporate shill.
Liberals / Leftists make it a point to ‘virtue signal’ routinely. They stink with righteous so it’s become a world-wide sport to point out their hypocrisies.