Chili appears to be a new emerging trend in Finland. Chili is added to most weird stuff- like ice cream, chocklate and bread. Here are some evidences of the new coming of chili.
Image: Chili-pineapple-orange ice cream
Image: Chili-pineapple bread
Today in one grocery shop I spotted another product line that used black and white to differentiate itself from others. These cans of beans, tomateos etc. were colored only with black and white.
You probably remember the documentary of Mc Donald’s: Supersize me. The documentary was full of critique to the culture of eating a gigant unhealthy meals. Fast food, specially hamurgers and related food, is a big trend in the world and supersizing is another in these places. But when there is a trend there is usually a countertrend raising. Minnies is a restaurant chain that offers not supersized but minisized foods. It is interesting to see the demand for that kind of restaurant in USA. (note: the image of this post has nothing to do with Minnies!)
Today I was having a lecture in an advertising agancy Family Inc’s 4 year birthday party. Besides of me there was another speaker, Brand Building Expert Minna Anttonen from Ben&Jerry’s, which is still a quite unknown ice cream brand in Finland even though well known for example in USA. Minna Anttonen had very interesting speak about the brand and she was the first lecturer that I have got some ice cream (very good!!)
Ben and Jerry’s is a premium ice cream brand with fine idea behind it. It does not advertise itself at least here in Finland but it is involved in many “social conscious” campaigns and through that it seeks to get good publicity. For example in last year it promised to give one euro/ sold ice cream pack to some charity. People were asked to what purpose to give the money. The mental health issues of young people got votes the most, and they donated the money to Helsinki Mission crisis phone targeted to help young people.
Ben and Jerry’s has the first fair trade ice cream for sale here in Finlad and it serves carbon neutral ice-cream. They also use green energy sources for ice cream production and are really concerned about the climate change issues- and also act based on their concerns. Doing good for the society is really one of their targets. Specially here in Finland this kind of social counsiousness of companies or brands is unique. I hope that many other companies start to follow the excellent example of Ben&Jerry’s !! One interesting question is that how does Ben&Jerry’s philosophy suit to Unilever’s one. I really hope that Unilever as a megacorporation would adapt one of its brand’s philosophy more.
image from page: http://www.consortfrozenfoods.co.uk/index2.php
Australian Cascade brewery located in Tasmania has started to produce green beer called Cascade Green. Do not worry: the colour of the beer in still normal, but the beer is environmentally friendly, 100% carbon offset (weak signal number one). The company announces in their internet pages:“All remaining greenhouse gas emissions from Cascade Green are offset. That means, from the moment we source the hops from the lush Tasmanian wilderness, through to when you place your empty bottles in the recycling bin, every single carbon emission has been accounted for.”
Just visit the pages of the beer http://www.cascadegreen.com.au/ and see how gree beer can go (A notice: you have to be over 18 years old to get acces to the pages (2. weak signal!))