Spot the multinational corporation pretending to be a nice friendly independent

[philmophlegm]

Which of the following lovely friendly companies is actually a front for an evil multinational?

Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream
Harris & Hoole coffee shops
Innocent Smoothies
PJ's Smoothies
Green & Black's chocolate
Teapigs tea
Sunshine Desserts



The answer is that to some extent, all of them are. (Well, except for Sunshine Desserts, which is where Reggie Perrin worked.)

Ben & Jerry's is part of Unilever. Harris & Hoole is 49% owned by Tesco (so probably an associate rather than a subsidiary, although I haven't checked the accounts). Innocent is a Coca-Cola subsidiary. PJ's is Pepsi. Green & Black's is Kraft. Teapigs is Tata.

I'll let you decide for yourself if this is a bad thing.

Comments

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

Yes, this exactly (well, I don't care about Sunshine Desserts :-p) As a boycotter of Nestle for the past couple of decades I am very well used to looking past the 'large print' brand-name for the overall group name, and being prepared for changes in the previous status quo. Similarly in the beauty world there is always much reporting, in the beauty blogs at least, of take-overs of smaller previous independents such as the Body Shop or Urban Decay by larger groups (this tends to be an issue because of animal-testing: where the small company is cruelty-free is that stance going to be eroded by being taken over by an animal-testing company, and even if the particular brand does remain cruelty-free some customers still don't want to ultimately be increasing profits of animal-testing groups.)

Also also, (and admittedly sounding somewhat contradictory to what I have said in the previous paragraph) obviously "nice friendly independents" and "evil multinationals" is very much begging the question. While in many cases I do think there are good reasons (of various sorts) for favouring small independent companies, and being wary of large unchallenged monopolies etc, it would be ridiculous to think that everything mega-corporations do is bad let alone that they are driven by specifically malicious intent, or to think that all small companies are motivated by the desire to be nice (rather than, say, to make a profit.) These are the sorts of unexamined prejudices that are exploited on both (all?) sides (eg by campaigners against hypermarkets and by competitors of same, by small companies who want to create 'fluffy' image to inspire customer loyalty and by large companies who buy out said small companies in the hopes that sufficient percentage of loyal customers will overlook the buyout and remain profit-providing.)