Van Leeuwen and the art of not advertising.

<p>&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t advertise&rdquo; is a common refrain I see in founder stories. It&rsquo;s usually a way to communicate product quality.&nbsp;<em>Our product is so good we didn&rsquo;t have to advertise.</em></p> <p>Ads are expensive. So not advertising is an attractive business strategy. But just because you don&rsquo;t advertise, doesn&rsquo;t mean you don&rsquo;t market. Every company needs some sort of customer acquisition strategy. It just doesn&rsquo;t need to be advertising.</p> <p>In this case, the non-advertising brand is Van Leeuwen, an artisanal ice cream brand that started with a single cart in 2008 and now boasts 50 locations across the US, plus retail distribution in stores from WalMart to Whole Foods. Co-founder Ben Van Leeuwen started the brand as a way to offer ice cream made up of only simple, high quality ingredients. Fun fact: Van Leeuwen based his original formulation on an ice cream recipe from French chef&nbsp;<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Keller" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Thomas Keller</a>&nbsp;of Michelin starred Per Se and French Laundry.</p> <p><a href="https://michelle-wiles.medium.com/how-to-scale-your-brand-without-ads-85adda9691af"><strong>Click Here</strong></a></p>