Company: Kindred Campaign: Make Mine Milk Category: Consumer PR of the Year - South - shortlisted Partner: Milk Marketing Forum Objectives Milk was a forgotten product with an image problem. Many people saw it as outdated and high in fat, resulting in a 20 per cent decline in milk sales after the deregulation of the milk market in 1994. The ‘make mine Milk’ campaign aims to slow the decline in milk sales and to improve consumers’ emotional and rational perceptions of milk. Within this context, the objectives of the PR programme in 2011/2012 were to: • Contribute to widespread awareness: achieve at least 15 pieces of media coverage in high-circulating national titles and 200 pieces overall • Focus on female audiences: achieve at least 50 pieces of coverage in women’s consumer magazines • Demonstrate ‘coolness’: at least 75 per cent of PR coverage to show celebrity endorsement for milk • Communicate low fat: at least 50 per cent of the PR coverage to reference the fact that milk is low in fat Target Audience The target audiences for the ‘make mine Milk’ campaign are twofold: mums (who are the gatekeepers of the family fridge) and teenage girls (the ‘mums of tomorrow’). In order to reach these audiences, we needed a PR strategy that would make stories about milk stand out from the usual diet and health slots. That strategy was to communicate milk’s cool and low-fat attributes through the power of celebrity. Action Generally, milk is not the most interesting of subject matters. Our creative tactics were therefore as follows: • The great unveil Ahead of the launch of each celebrity that fronted ‘make mine Milk’, we ran a ‘teaser’ campaign on social media to target consumers and journalists, unveiling clues about our latest star in the days preceding the announcement. This created anticipation and excitement, and ensured that members of the media took a keen interest in the news. The approach generated widespread coverage across the year including The Sun, The Daily Star, Metro and Channel 4’s ‘Stand up for the Week’. • Celebs behind the scenes We provided national and consumer media with ‘behind closed doors’ access to our A-list stars. These included Vinnie Jones, Kelly Osbourne, Kelly Rowland and Olympic trio Laura Trott, Nicola Adams and Jade Jones. On a simple level, this meant giving exclusive interviews with, and photography of, the celebrities to titles such as The Sunday Mirror’s Celebs on Sunday, The Daily Mail’s Weekend, The Sun’s Bizarre, The Daily Express, Shout and Hello. However, we also launched bespoke online campaigns for each celebrity to show them in a way that they’d never been seen before. The activities included: Mate of the Month with Kelly Rowland: accentuating her position as a friendly and down-to-earth female role model, we offered teenage girls the chance to win exclusive goodies for them and their best mates through a Facebook competition (picked up widely in teen media). We also produced video footage of Kelly talking about her best friend Barbara and the qualities that make a good pal. The video was covered by OK! Magazine and First News among others. Vinnie’s Advice Corner with Vinnie Jones: making Vinnie the Internets most unlikely agony uncle, we launched a series of five films with him giving advice on a range of topics including Facebook etiquette and relationship break-ups. The videos received nearly 50,000 views on YouTube and were covered by women’s titles including Female First and Celeb News. • Milk moments To bring out the healthiness and versatility of milk, but still communicating its ‘cool’ credentials, we created entertaining and engaging tactics to show celebs’ love of the ‘white stuff’. These were: The Milk Challenge: our own Top Gear-style leader board for celebrities to down a pint of milk in the quickest possible time. In 2012, Olympic champions Laura Trott, Nicola Adams and Jade Jones went head-to-head in the ultimate drink-off, trying to beat previous entries by the likes of Justin Bieber, The Wanted and Rupert Grint. The videos have racked up over 500,000 YouTube views and have been covered by websites including HeatWorld, Sky News and Capital FM. The Smarter Starter Challenge: in February, Kelly Osbourne fronted an initiative to get people to try milk in five different ways for breakfast, over the course of a week. Not only was it a hit with teens on the ‘make mine Milk’ Facebook page, but we also used it as an opportunity to engage mummy bloggers and to get them to try it with the rest of their family and write about their experiences. Diet secrets: when opportunities arose, we alerted food and entertainment correspondents on national media to the role that milk has played in the diets of ‘make mine Milk’ celebrities. This included promoting the fact that champion boxer Nicola Adams builds up to every bout with a bowl of cereal drenched in milk, and that Kelly Rowland can’t live without a latté. Coverage included The Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph and The Times. Results The PR tactics generated a huge amount of media coverage and talkability. Against our original objectives, we achieved: • 32 pieces of national coverage – 113 per cent above the annual target • 180 pieces of consumer coverage – 360 per cent above the target • 427 pieces of coverage overall – 214 per cent beyond our target • 97 per cent of the coverage showed celebrity endorsement for milk and 57 per cent contained a reference to ‘low fat’ milk On a broader level, the PR campaign has contributed to improvements in both rational and emotional perceptions of milk (monitored by an independent consumer tracking survey): • ‘Milk is cool’ has improved by +32 per cent since before the campaign started • ‘Milk is becoming more popular’ has improved by +29 per cent since before ‘make mine Milk’ began • ‘Milk is low in fat’ has improved by +20 per cent The impact of PR in these achievements is highlighted by the fact that one in four people (24 per cent) claim to have seen the campaign either online or in newspapers. To give this context, the visibility of the bus-side advertising is only slightly ahead at 31 per cent. To isolate the effect that ‘make mine Milk’ has had on perceptions of milk vs other market conditions, we separated out results for people who were ‘aware’ of the campaign against those who were ‘unaware’. The result was conclusive proof that it is ‘make mine Milk’ which is responsible for the improvements, given that: • Perceptions of milk being ‘cool’ are +10 per cent higher among those ‘aware’ • Perceptions of milk ‘becoming more popular’ are +13 per cent higher among those ‘aware’ • Perceptions of milk being ‘low in fat’ are +8 per cent higher among those ‘aware’ • Claimed usage of milk is +18 per cent higher among those ‘aware’ The outcome of these factors is that milk consumption across Britain has risen. According to market data from Kantar, consumption rose by +3.0 per cent overall (figures for y/e October 2011) and then again by +0.6 per cent for the same period in 2012. An independent audit of sales figures from the MMF companies indicate an increase in sales of 110 million litres per year. This is the first sales rise for over 20 years. URLs www.makemineMilk.co.uk www.facebook.com/makemineMilk www.youtube.com/makemineMilkUK The PRmoment Golden Hedgehog Awards 2014 are now open for entries. Here are this years updated categories.