Ben and Jerry's Schweddy Balls wasn't funny at all!

Ben and Jerry’s thought that doing an ice cream after a Saturday Night Live skit wasn’t going to cause any type of hype they were wrong.   Why is the name Schweddy balls causing so much media attention  and leaving such a bad taste in the “American Family Association Group” mouth? 

When Ben and Jerry launched this ice cream I am sure that they were thinking that it was going to be funny and everyone would associate it to Saturday Night Live, there was a cow on the container with a  Saturday Night Live t-shirt on it.  The spokesman Sean Greenwood said:  "We've always been a company that has had a sense of humor," he said. Sometimes, he said, they spend time discussing serious business and other times "we just do fun."

Ben and Jerry’s have released other ice cream names in the past that have been questionable think hubby hubby (a reference to gay marriages), Karmel Sutra and Black and Tan (a reference to the infamous police force that burned down chunks of Ireland in the 1920’s). 

Although they had fun coming up with the name who wanted to eat the ice cream that tastes like Schweddy Balls?  Sure its ice cream with rum and malt balls what could be wrong with that?  But think about it nobody wants to eat ice cream after thinking about Schweddy Balls.

We will never know if they did RACE (Research/Assessment/Communication/Evaluation), but if they would have looked more into Schweddy Balls they could have saved themselves some time, money and effort.  This is why it is important to do the “back work” in Public Relations so this can be avoided or you can be prepared if you are going to have a backlash like this.

Although this caused Ben and Jerry’s to discontinue Schweddy Balls, or as they call it put it into the “graveyard” it didn’t destroy them all together, they still have a great reputation as they are such a huge corporation, but if they were smaller they could have had some major damage and this could have cost them a lot of time, money and effort to rebuild their company.

So next time you are thinking of doing something new without doing the “back work” think Schweddy Balls!