May 11 marked the 36th anniversary of Bob Marley’s death, and as a solemn tribute to all the great man achieved in his short lifetime, Ben & Jerry’s are using his face to sell an ice cream flavour.
Bob Marley’s One Love is a limited-batch banana ice cream with caramel and graham cracker swirls and fudge peace signs.
Jeff Furman, a board member at Ben & Jerry’s, compares the multinational company to Marley – a noted Rastafarian who rejected much of the systems in place in the Western world as evil and oppressive. “I mean, the words, ‘one love, one heart’: that touches everybody in every language. That’s very connected to the kind of company we want to be. We don’t do it through music, we do it through ice cream.”
It’s worth noting that “a portion” of proceeds will benefit the One Love Camp in Jamaica, a youth education and empowerment camp. It’s also worth noting that Ben & Jerry’s is owned by Unilever, who own hundreds of household brands, and will benefit from this exploitation of Bob Marley’s name far more than any camp.
Then again, the ice cream has fudge peace signs in it, and Bob loved peace, so this is quite the moral quandary.
