9. Connecting with Consumers >
  9.1 Social Mission Campaigns >
    9.1.2 Drilling is not the ANWR

Don’t Bake Alaska

In response to a U.S. Senate vote in 2005 that set the stage to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, Ben & Jerry’s held a demonstration on Earth Day in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC, declaring that we do Serving up Baked Alaska on the Capital Lawn not want the Arctic sacrificed for oil industry profits. Our partners in the escapade included Greenpeace and the Alaska Wilderness League.

To make our point (and keep the Capitol police happy), we created the world’s largest Baked Alaska out of 600-plus pounds of Ben & Jerry’s Fossil Fuel ice cream, several cubic feet of sheet cake, thousands of marshmallows, and a couple of culinary blow torches. With that much ice cream covered in a toasted marshmallow crust, we thought it dramatically symbolized the ANWR Protest Eventenormous environmental damage that drilling in the Arctic would cause. It also tasted marvelous.

The demonstration was attended by a bus load of Ben & Jerry’s Vermont employees (we offset the travel emissions!), Greenpeace and AWL staff and activists, and 1,200 people who were enticed by a viral email campaign that hinted at free dessert.

To amplify the message, Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops around the nation offered a special Baked Alaska Sundae and posted ANWR signage in shops. Our Company website, www.benjerry.com and lickglobalwarming.org highlighted information about the drilling of the Arctic and offered consumers the opportunity to take action by writing to Congress. We saw a significant bump in traffic on ANWR protest signlickglobalwarming.org, including 4,000 ANWR page views routed from www.benjerry.com.

After a great deal of wrangling, Congress stepped back from the brink in 2005 and did not authorize drilling in ANWR. We are pleased to have been a small part of the successful opposition to this short-sighted plan.