To this day, milk remains a mainstay in American family fridges. However, during the past decade, milk has experienced increased pressure on sales nationally from a variety of factors. Nowhere has that been more apparent than in California, which is looked upon as a precursor of what’s to come for the rest of the US in terms of trends – dietary and otherwise. The end result is a decline in consumption and sales outpacing the rest of the US. Unlike the rest of the nation, the largest ethnic group in California are Hispanics, who make up over 40% of the state.
To learn more about the state of dairy milk today in California, in early 2019 we conducted ethnographies across the state with Millennial parents in English and Spanish that fit the diverse nature of the state. What we learned was eye opening. Even for parents that grew up drinking milk in the US or Latin America, there was a growing distrust of the dairy milk and the dairy industry. From other parents, from social media and even from new Netflix documentaries, they were hearing things that were beginning to increase a sense of doubt.
Shore up confidence in dairy milk among the majority of Millennial parents (with focus on +50% of whom are Hispanic) that still have milk in their fridge but are starting to be troubled by the increasing negativity in the market, while also directly combatting the misinformation for those searching for answers.
Our efforts began with broader reach digital and social driven tactics including online video, diet and fitness influencers and digital audio to shore up confidence among our audience that still has an affinity for milk with messaging designed to reinforce the benefits and make a clear connection with these consumers in both English and Spanish.
This manifested itself in a series of engaging (and award winning) Claymation videos, each built around a simple truth about milk, from giving you strength, to a healthy heart, to helping you fall asleep at night – things that our research showed that alternative plant based ‘milks’ do not get credit for. We were looking to solidify those “tasty truths” in our target’s mind – associating those key benefits with dairy milk.
We then launched a highly targeted, fully integrated parallel campaign designed to address the doubt by combatting the myths around dairy. This began with a media tour from highly regarded bicultural nutritionist Nina Shapiro (author of “Hype”) to help set the stage that this would be a fact based effort and prove that milk nutrition is a science, not a point of view. This effort also included additional Hispanic influencers that created video content delivered to CA parents via digital partners.
To follow that fact-based effort up, we decided to embed milk in a larger discussion about misinformation. By using a charming, playful tone – and a thought-provoking narrative – our aim was to disarm the critics, reassure parents, and place milk at the heart of a campaign that reminds everyone to “know the facts” and question where they get their information from. For this we developed a video in the style of “School House Rock” created in English for Millennial parents to co-view with their kids with the original musicians and animators of that series to shed a light on the dangers of misinformation and encouraging people to “know the facts” about dairy milk.
That video sparked memes and other socially sharable content, and along with a search campaign in Spanish and English designed to get milk back into a conversation increasingly dominated by plant-based alternatives, we drove Californians to a relaunched gotmilk.com in English and Spanish, that would provide answers to the public’s many questions on milk – from the impact of sugar in milk, to how it really stacks up compared to the alternatives.
In testing, an amazing 90% of milk doubters found our video content appealing, with a majority of that skeptical audience saying that “the ad made me want to drink more dairy milk”. In addition, there was a whopping 86% positive reaction to our “Tasty Truth” content on social media (a space known for trolling dairy milk). In media modeling mix results, we increased efficiency on spend by 13% (showing the campaign worked harder), and we closed the consumption gap a full half percentage point (from 1.6% in 2018 to 1.1% in 2019), the equivalent of over $6M in sales.
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