Ben and Jerry

On Thursday, Ben and Jerry's announced that all their ingredients would be Free Trade Certified by the end of 2013. They held a promotional event by Leicester Square where the actual Ben and Jerry spoke for a few minutes and employees gave out free samples of all their flavors. Without a doubt, I was there.

Ben on the left, Jerry on the right. I didn't get a chance to stop them and talk, but they seemed friendly and receptive to whoever pushed their way through the crowd towards them.

There were two cow mascots and a hazelnut mascot (we think, it was more or less a brown circle). Of course we took pictures, but they're all on my friend's camera. There were tons of little kids (apparently there's no school on Thursdays in London) who we had to slyly edge out of our way as we took pictures. You know what I'm talking about, you pretend that you're going to stand back and give everyone else a chance first but you edge your way up nonetheless, with an innocent smile the entire time. Hey, it's not like you see a hazelnut everyday (or a girl in her twenties willing to lick a hazelnut costume. Think about where the costume has been, and it stops being as cute)

They were actually a funny duo. Jerry recommended that we take a free sample, go to the back of the line, start eating the sample and finish right in time for the next sample when we get to the head of the line. Ben explained his theory that you feel cold only when there's a high spread between internal and external temperatures. That's why you should eat ice cream and lower your internal temperature...bogus by the way. As usual, it was rainy and freezing in London so our experiences handily disproved it.

However, it was a marketing lesson of sorts. They talked about how they tried to stimulate ice cream consumption in winter months to boost sales. Ben said that the Hot Fudge flavor had been created with that goal in mind. Hopefully, in winter months, people can associate with Hot Fudge and will eat Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Of course, Ben and Jerry's is one of the good companies (even though they sold out to Unilever), but it was interesting to see how psychology plays such a key role in every marketing decision they make.

Anyway, getting onto the good stuff. Our group split up where Natalie and Yuha stood in line while Angela and I waited to rush the employees who came out of the nearby movie theater with trays of samples. In the end, all of us had three and a half samples. The only one I didn't enjoy was Strawberry Cheesecake (I'm not quite sure what other flavors I had, but they were good). However, other people started copying Angela and I so the employees started semi-clotheslining people as they rushed up to them. We managed to grab our last sample before the clotheslining began. Eat that, Ben and Jerry's lol