Ben Cohen Goes Guerrilla In His Next Push to Free Ben & Jerry's

In April, Ben Cohen flew to Amsterdam in hopes of handing Magnum Ice Cream Company CEO Peter ter Kulve a 100,000-signature petition asking him to sell off Ben & Jerry's, the brand he cofounded with Jerry Greenfield in 1978. Security wouldn’t let him past the lobby. Undeterred, Cohen is now back in Vermont, preparing the next salvo in his fight to wrest Ben & Jerry’s from the hands of a publicly traded company. While he won’t be going to Amsterdam this time, a battalion of 200 anthropomorphic, miniature pints of ice cream will go instead. The little ice-cream men are the centerpiece of a campaign called “The Long Way Home,” part of the Free Ben & Jerry's initiative. Conceived by Pulse Signal Agency, it's the winning entry of an request for proposals Cohen made at ADWEEK's Brandweek summit in September, and makes its public debut today (Tuesday Nov. 3) In the coming weeks, the “mini pints" will appear in random places around Amsterdam—train seats, cafe tables, canal walls, and so on. With their doughy limbs and carrying a bow-spotted bindle, the cute little things are just begging to be picked up. Which is the point. If all goes to plan, each person who finds a mini pint will move it in the general direction of Waterbury, Vermont, the birthplace of Ben & Jerry’s. An embedded tech feature will track the pints as they travel and photos will be shared across social media. When a pint finally reaches Vermont, to quote the pitch deck, “a report is delivered to Magnum's board, and to its shareholders in Amsterdam, London, and New York, listing every carrier, mile, city, country, and Safe House.” “The whole idea behind it is that Magnum essentially has kidnapped Ben & Jerry’s and taken it to Amsterdam,” Cohen told ADWEEK. “The goal here is to get the pints back to Vermont.” Waterbury, VT is 3,434 miles from Amsterdam, so getting them there take a while. But that’s fine with Cohen. The longer the effort takes, the more attention it’ll get. And attention is what’s needed, in Cohen’s David-and-Goliath fight. Ben vs. Magnum Magnum was created when Unilever spun off its ice-cream division in July of 2025. When the CPG giant paid $326 million for Ben & Jerry’s in 2000, sale terms included a proviso that an independent board would be empowered to continue the brand’s mission as a vehicle for progressive social change, while Unilever would steer the corporate ship. The arrangement worked, if uneasily, until the board began pushing for ending sales in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The position roused the fury of pro-Israel groups, not to mention that pulling out of a big market would have meant a revenue hit. Rather than withdraw, Unilever announced in July of 2021 that it would stay in Israel by selling the business to a local licensee. Having been cut out of that decision, the board sued. By the end of 2022, Unilever announced that “the litigation with Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board has been resolved,” but provided no details. The tension between corporate owner and independent board has continued into the era of Magnum—which Cohen said has “dismantled the entire independent board” and believes that the only remedy is for Magnum to “sell Ben and Jerry’s to a group of socially aligned investors.” Magnum was unavailalbe for comment by press time. Cohen said that he chose Pulse Signal's idea because it’s easy to understand and, at $14,750 all in, it was budget friendly, too. Overall, Cohen added, he was “amazed” by the number of submissions—a bit short of 100—considering the modest compensation. “I was offering a trophy, bragging rights, and free ice cream for life,” he said.

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Ben Cohen Goes Guerrilla In His Next Push to Free Ben & Jerry's

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