How 'Chunks Of Monkey' Foretold Doom For Ben & Jerry's In Japan

When Ben & Jerry's co-founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, launched their ice cream in Japan in 2012, they were met with some rather unexpected challenges. Most of these boiled down to a slew of cultural differences the company had surprisingly never even considered, including the brand's ability to adapt its vision and popularity to the tastes and preferences of the Japanese people. 

However, 2012 wasn't the first time the ice cream titans tried to enter the Japanese market. According to a 2012 article in Japan Today, Ben & Jerry's had attempted to bring their icy treats to Japan once before, in 1997, in a "tie-up with 7-Eleven," but were unsuccessful. Though this early attempt turned out to be a hilarious PR nightmare, it was their most controversial, and it foretold the failure of the Japanese market yet to come.

For U.S. consumers, one of Ben & Jerry's most charming qualities as a brand is their quirky, punny, and at times nonsensical flavor names. But something was definitely lost in translation — literally — for the Japanese, who hard-passed on a much-beloved American flavor called Chunky Monkey. When Ben & Jerry's looked into the issue, they found the translation itself wasn't conveying quite the right message, as it read: "Chunks of Monkey," in Japanese. As longtime Ben & Jerry's Flavor Guru, Peter Lind (currently the "Primal Ice Cream Therapist,"), explained it to NBC News in 2009, "... people there weren't excited about it, because as it turned out, they didn't want to 'eat monkeys.'"

Ben & Jerry's fans love their chunks — something Japanese consumers weren't too keen on back in 1997. Furthermore, their ice cream was too sweet, the portions too big, and the flavors not well-suited to Japanese palates. When they decided to take another swing some 15 years later, the brand kicked things off with a video simply titled, "Message from Vermont." In it, an enthusiastic Lind announces he's coming to Japan and creating new ice cream flavors just for them, saying, "... it will be an exchange of chunks." Six more comical "chunky" video shorts followed (available on Ben & Jerry's YouTube channel), and are worth their viewing time in laughs. 

Rather than slinking away from a challenge, the dynamic ice cream duo attempted to win the Japanese over with a smaller mini-pot size, new Japanese-friendly flavors, and by infusing humor in all their advertising. Sadly, after eight years in the Japanese market, Unilever, the ice cream's parent company, pulled the plug, withdrawing them from Japan in 2020. It's a story still being shared today in business education courses, including Harvard, as a case study illustrating to young entrepreneurs the pitfalls of not doing your cultural homework. 

Though Ben & Jerry's humble beginnings in 1978 (serving ice cream out of a renovated gas station in Burlington, Vermont) charted them a mostly smooth course in over 40 countries worldwide, the journey hasn't been without its bumps — or, in the case of Japan, "chunks" — in the road.