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hello I'm Katherine kleene I'm delighted to be speaking at knowledge of Orton
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today with yosin solheim CEO of Ben and Jerry's the iconic delicious ice cream
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company and we're really here to talk about not only your ice cream we must talk a little about your ice cream but
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really the social mission of the company uh and how you have maintained that social Mission even as Ben and Jerry's
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has become part of Unilever uh and has continued for many years well yeah I know great to be here thank you for I uh
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you know I think it's like all companies with a long history Ben Jers is now 36
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years as a mission Le company I think the the key thing in the whole transition to one shareholder from
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multiple shareholders was the Govern structure that was put in place and I think Unity was very Visionary in
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recognizing that you know it says Ben and Jerry on the packaging yes if Ben and Jerry go out and say well this is
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all you know it's not really true anymore this is not a mission Le company anymore that would really undermine the
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value of that acquisition so unever acquired uh Benes in 2000 and uh this was a company that
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where the brand where the social mission was part of was baked into the brand it's an integral part of how we do
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business and and Unilever saw that and its investors saw this from the beginning and saw value and and even at
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that time saw value in this so that's why they set up and together with the then sitting board agreed to set up an
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independent board of directors and that act basically like our benefit uh Corporation director they are
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responsible for the social mission for the Integrity of the Ben andary's brand
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our policies they even get involved in basic things like wage setting in the factories where we have a livable wage
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policy uh that is overseen by by the board of governor of directors and and the directors are self- selecting so un
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has two seats of 11 board members fascinating and so so unusual very and had a career in ice cream at unever
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before coming on five years ago as CEO of Ben jer's how how was that transition
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to go from the larger entity of unever to this interesting different uh Mission driven company yeah I don't know whether
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that transition was tougher for them or for me uh but no I I you know unver as a
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company is very aligned in its values it actually has a lot of diversity in it in
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terms of management styles personalities it has a history of quite a lot of autonomy in its in its senior leaders so
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it wasn't like a a super stark contrast you know I worked in Italy I worked in
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Sweden the culture of Ben and Jerry's is actually similar right to uh to typical
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Scandinavian company it's a flat non-h hierarchical sort of approach to business so uh no so the biggest thing
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for me was I felt a big sense of responsibility sure uh and uh but with a really exciting group of people to work
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with and have stayed involved in some in yeah you know they're they're not they
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are involved uh but they do more of their own things they have the best jobs in the world their job is to be Ben and
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to be Jerry and they basically just have to deliver on that uh so day today is really the management team and the board
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of directors interesting so Ben jer's describes itself as a as a values-driven
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company um you celebrate the your social environmental governance uh values on the website can you talk with us about
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how that plays out in action you know how how do we move from words to to deeds and actions well I think that's
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the key point a lot of companies would say they're consumer Le yes you know whether that's in product development or
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in ad Mission similarly when companies that come to the world of CSR or whatever they look at what do people
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really care about and then how can we be part of that as Ben and J we come out it
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the other way we actually start with what do we truly believe in us and then we execute really well because we truly
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believe in it and hence convince others to join us so that's what we really mean
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by values that it starts with our values and then we apply it enjoying movements
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and other partners to make change so talk to us about some of those specific values and and how they are enacted
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through your products through your Employment Practices and we one yeah take one with just just one uh let's
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take samesex marriage yeah uh so that came uh on the agenda in the 80s at Ben and Jerry's Ben and Jerry was one of the
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first companies to offer samex Partners the same rights yeah Health Care Etc so when that started to come into uh the
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public domain and and become a debate it's very clear for the company we can't
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just say well you're okay if you're a Ben and jerus but if you're not you're
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not so it was very natural for the employees to join in and campaign for same-sex marriage and then as we grew
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bigger and bigger we scale that campaign up whereby now we have you know we we finished in the US with a supreme court
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uh decision this year but we also won in Ireland we put it on the map in Australia in France uh in multiple
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countries where this comes up uh it's something that we believe in we don't do
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an assessment if this is popular or unpopular when we started a same-sex uh marriage uh campaign in Australia not a
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single political party supported samex marriage and everybody came to us what are you doing you shouldn't do well
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sorry this is something we really believe in right and as you do that so you've had employee individual employees
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engaged in these campaigns um B Jerry's as a company as a major uh donor or leading a campaign yeah no I mean we run
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this you know it's it's the amazing thing is that selling ice cream and uh
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running campaigns is the same set of skills you want to get people's attention you need social media
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H you need events and and the one great thing that we have of course is ice cream right it's very hard to be angry
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and eat ice cream at the same time it's very tempting to stop and and sign a
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petition if there's free ice cream so ice cream plays a really important role
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in how we connect with our fans but no we we we we treat those campaigns in exactly the same way as we would treat a
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new product launch and sometimes they actually appear on the on on your products right I saw this but I I I do I
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do or I I I do I do was the celebration of of the same sex marriage act right now we've just launched a product uh
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save our swir where which is in support of a binding climate uh uh agreement in Paris the cop in five weeks time and we
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launched that with uh Tesla out on the west coast and then we actually launched the European version in Bon during the
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climate negotiation inside the climate negotiations at the UN so we had the opportunity to to feed
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all those people trying to work this out for us right and and and you actually use ice cream as a as a metaphor for
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global warming right we show what ice cream looks like if it's just two degrees warmer and it's a bit of a mess
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it's a bit of a mess yeah it's a fabulous a fabulous metaphor like this is what happens to your ice cream cones
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in two degrees what happens to the world if it's warmer in two degrees um are
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there instances where you uh as a CEO you as a company have said yeah we care about that issue we can't go there that
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we're that's too that's too hot that's too controversial there are many issues
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where we've had to say we can't go there not necessarily because they're too hot
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or too controversial more because we don't judge our that we have a real ability to
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make an impact or that we are really prepared pred you know we really believe we got to walk the talk not just talk so
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we want to really align our internal programs with the external campaigning so there are issues that come up that
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are important and legitimate issues and we we haven't you know built an internal
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program and we'll start that and then join in uh but controversy is not something that that scares us maybe it
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should but it doesn't you know we we were the only Corporation to support Occupy Wall Street uh at sone Park which
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was a surprise to them yeah as well and uh you know and as I say nothing bad really happened to our business as a
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result of that yeah so what so what are the as um you know we like to uh hope in
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the social impact space that that one that companies can actually achieve a positive Financial return and a social
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return uh on investment and on their on social impact strategies what's your
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sense of uh you know how this pays off or doesn't pay off for for Ben and Jerry's is there is
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there I mean it sounds terribly craft but is there money to be made through Corporate social responsibility through
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this kind of values driven company there is there is because people want to make a difference with all the
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things that they can actions and activities that they can can do so what you buy and how you buy it is a big part
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of your everyday life and increasingly uh consumers are saying I don't want to waste my money on on
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products I don't try to make a difference now there's a lot of greenwash out there
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and I would uh you know so people are are rightly so skeptical and demand you know real evidence and and and and some
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other uh authorities and just what a company say but uh it's the fastest growing area of fast moving consumer
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goods by far socially responsible companies are making up 60% of the growth in fast moving consumer goods in
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developed markets and if you look at like a neelson statistic that just came out now which was across 14 countries
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what you're seeing is the rate of change is really picking up uh in 2013 50% of
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respondents said that they would pay more for a socially responsible product today that's already at
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66% and accelerating and obviously a Big Driver of that is our wonderful Millennials yeah yeah and and do you see
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this as something that any company can do I mean there Ben and Jerry's what could be criticized on some you know is
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this a healthy product I'm thinking of other products that we may look at and
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say that's not a that's not a healthy product that's not a product that's good
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for the environment and yet can any company um find ways to AB absolutely to to live this Mission absolutely uh I
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think you know not every company will become a a you know an activist company or a campaigning company uh like Ben and
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jares I wouldn't I wouldn't think that's that's appropriate for every company but
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every company can make uh those decisions that optimize their social impact and their business impact in any
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industry anywhere that benefits their employees their communities the environment um whichever
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constituents that they they address so I don't think this is something unique to
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specific companies uh on the on the healthy or non-healthy products and good products and bad products again you know
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for us it's all about transparency and I always say you know when you're tucking
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into a Ben and& jer's and you're on a diet you you know you know there's no
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hidden calories here they're right there right for you to enjoy and the world
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needs all sorts of different things uh to function so now I think transparency is critical MH uh in any offer people
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should really understand what they're getting into and we shouldn't try to
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fool people we shouldn't have hidden sugars and hidden fats Etc it's got to
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be transparent and open and open choices uh and and it goes the same for all other Industries so again I think it's
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very hard to say oh I'm in this business and this product hence I can't get a
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social impact right strategy right interesting um and as you think about the social impact that that Ben and
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Jerry's has had in the places where you've tried to make a difference um and
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I'm particularly interested in your own operations whether this is your supply
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chain uh your HR practices um can you talk to us about something that you're
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particularly proud of perhaps something relatively recent and then areas where you say we haven't cracked this nut we
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still have work to do in this area I think actually we could could be the same example actually in a sense you
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know when when we uh we did a sort of a assessment around what are the really big and important issues and what are
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the really urgent issues uh that are important to us I mean we did a lot of internal discussion and it was very
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clear to us that there were two big big topics that we need to address over the next 5 to 10 years and that's climate
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and climate Justice right and it's urgent and that's Equity as we're seeing
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Equity both racial and income uh the inequities that we're seeing is creating
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such a tension in society it's hard even to operate businesses neither in that
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environment of climate change and the environment or inequity so we've really
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embraced these two topics and what I'm the most proud of is to just see how our
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teams our partners really embrace it and scale it and and really throw themselves
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into making a difference that's probably what makes me the most proud right uh
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what we have in crack is how do you reduce your carbon footprint by 80% true when you you know there's a lot of again
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noise out there or we going to be carbon neutral or this or that well the carbon
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footprint of a business goes end to end it starts on a farm and finishes with a you know the waste product sure and you
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need to take responsibility for the whole thing and we need to reduce that by 80% 50% of our carbon fopr is in
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ingredients wow so so it originates on a farm and and we really believe that carbon neutrality is a real opportunity
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for Farmers to generate another income stream in carbon in setting so it's one
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of those things we haven't cracked it because we're not there but what we did
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was we put a price on carbon so we said we put arbitrarily $10 end to end per ton yeah and then we allocate that money
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to a carbon insetting program where we inherently are investing in Farmers to inset Carbon on their Farms fascinating
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and and on the the inequity inequality front uh I maybe two questions um making clear so what what is the I
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mean it sometimes intuitively we can see this but what is the connection you're
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between business success and inequality what is that negative relationship you're seeing uh and and how might you
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take action in this space so you know that's typically the first question you
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get when you're getting involved in in structural racism H and and other of these really
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Dee rooted social issues and what's in it for a business if you actually look
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at the correlation of success of economic success and inequality uh is highly correl ated so
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so we have an inherent value and belief that a society where everybody's treated justly and equally it's just a
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better Community to be in uh but actually if you look at the econometrics of it it Maps out very nicely as well in
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terms of economic uh opportunity and success so it's not a direct correlation it
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comes from our human values it comes from the values we have in our company uh but we also really see those
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communities thriving and doing better and being better for our business so that's a that's a sort of a link now
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climate Justice is about climate change but it's also about the fact that it's
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the poor people right disadvantaged people they get hurt first the wealthy can move the you know and can shift
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around the poor cannot so that has an equity component in it but as we're moving now into the next phase for us
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you know we have to recognize that we're a terribly white company you know we we
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come from Vermont Vermont's 96% white so we've had to do a lot of work in our
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company to really really really understand it and we've partnered with a whole host of different amazing Partners
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we've had a lot of Nos and activists has have taken their time and invested in us
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right uh to to make it get a better understanding of this and and I think 2016 will be exciting it's a it's
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election year it's a great opportunity as I like to see to say to rearrange the
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lighting to get a disproportionate impact on certain key issues like voter rights and and and
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minority participation and our democracy great fabulous talking with with you and
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uh you know just a extraordinary impact through ice cream and starting with ice cream so thank you much for thank you so
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much for being with us thank you C great thank you [Music]