Come for the ice cream, stay for the activism.

That’s been Ben & Jerry’s ethos since the company was founded in 1978, but in 2025, the messaging strategy is on full display.

Even before the Trump administration began to target diversity and equity initiatives in the public and private sectors, many brands had already begun to cave to right-wing pressure and pull back on annual events like Pride. Now, more companies are cutting DEI efforts, and some are growing increasingly silent during heritage occasions like Black History Month.

But not Ben & Jerry’s, which has continued to speak out in support of racial justice and reproductive rights. That comes amid alleged pressure from the brand’s own parent company, Unilever. According to an amended complaint filed by the brand, earlier this month, Unilever removed Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever from his post, which Ben & Jerry’s alleges was due to his “commitment to Ben & Jerry’s social mission and essential brand integrity…rather than any genuine concerns regarding his performance history.” Ben & Jerry’s filed the first version of this lawsuit in November, accusing Unilever of trying to silence the brand from expressing support for Palestinian refugees and ending military aid to Israel. In a February filing, it alleged that Unilever had “unilaterally barred” the brand from mentioning President Trump in a social media post. Unilever did not respond to Marketing Brew’s request for comment.

Amid the ongoing legal action, Ben & Jerry’s has continued to post about today’s political climate in more subtle ways, like sharing the definition of an oligarchy with its followers. It has also taken to the streets. At the January People’s March rally in Washington, DC, which Ben & Jerry’s sponsored, employees handed out ice cream and posted photos and videos from the event on the brand’s accounts; one TikTok video of signs at the march generated more than 2 million likes, and since January, the brand’s follower count has increased by about 4 million.

The response online is a promising sign, according to Palika Makam, Ben & Jerry’s US activism lead, and Jay Tandan, Ben & Jerry’s global head of digital marketing, who said the brand isn’t planning on tamping down its activism any time soon.

“I don’t think this is the only time that it’s felt like Ben & Jerry’s or a handful of companies were the only ones standing in their commitment to justice and equity and equality,” Makam told us. “It’s more important than ever for us to speak out…and do the work that we’ve always done.”

Read more here about Ben & Jerry’s approach to social and social justice.—KH

When T-Mobile spent about $600 million to acquire the digital out-of-home (DOOH) company Vistar Media in January, it locked down a network of more than 1.1 million digital screens in 30+ countries. A small but intriguing part of that count is the more than 130,000 screens situated in the backs of taxis and rideshare vehicles.

The acquisition is the latest expansion for T-Mobile in the rideshare advertising arena. In June, T-Mobile Advertising Solutions formed a pact with Uber Ads for Uber to run ads on T-Mobile’s network of screens in its rideshare media network, called Octopus Interactive.

It’s not just T-Mobile getting in on rideshare advertising. Interest in the ad format has been growing for a few years, and it’s continuing to grow in 2025 as marketers pour considerable spend into DOOH ads and other brands like Uber and Lyft also build out their rideshare ad capabilities.

Last April, a law ending a ban on ads inside rideshare vehicles in New York City went into effect, opening up thousands of new screens to advertisers looking to target consumers. At least a quarter of the revenue from those ads goes to rideshare drivers.

Looking ahead, the DOOH market is predicted to only grow: over a third of the $10 billion in OOH spending expected to occur by 2027 will go to DOOH platforms, according to eMarketer.

“The next iteration is just blurring the definition of what TV even is,” Tony Marlow, LG Ad Solutions CMO, said onstage during a panel at CES in Las Vegas earlier this year. “Right now we think of it as the largest screen in the home, but you’re starting to see an emergence of all of these nontraditional screen environments, whether it’s [the] back of an Uber [or] the back of your own electric vehicle.”

Read more here.—JS

No one gets into a lather quite like a soap company, so perhaps a recent salvo from Dr. Bronner’s, the 77-year-old personal care brand with the famously wordy packaging, should come as no surprise.

Dr. Bronner’s, which has the highest rating among all 76 brands certified by B Lab, which evaluates companies on what it calls “a company’s entire social and environmental impact,” is dropping that certification, it announced earlier this year.

• The announcement comes after years of advocacy from Dr. Bronner’s for B Lab to reform its certification, which the soap maker contends lacks vigor and allows undeserving companies to be certified and to use their certification to counteract bad press over unethical business practices.

“Despite our multi-year effort urging B Lab to strengthen its standards,” Dr. Bronner’s wrote in a February 11 Instagram post, “they have allowed the subsidiaries of multinational companies—that have histories of socially & environmentally destructive practices in their supply chains—to obtain the certification & use it to greenwash their branding.⁣”

Fast Company reported that while the company previously paid a fee that will keep it listed on the B Lab site through September, it has “already begun removing the B Corp logo from branding and marketing materials.”

Read more about why Dr. Bronner’s dropped the certification.—AAN

Stories we’re jealous of.

• The Wall Street Journal interviewed the real companies that share the same (or nearly the same) moniker as the fictional corporate antagonist on the TV show Severance.
• Bloomberg looked at “Buy American” campaigns from the Boston Tea Party to today and why they historically haven’t worked.
• The Atlantic wrote a farewell to Forever 21, which just filed for bankruptcy for the second time, and the era of consumerism it represented.