Company: Kindred Campaign: Make Mine Milk Category: Integrated Communications Campaign 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 Many people saw it as outdated and high in fat, resulting in a 20 per cent decline in milk sales since the deregulation of the milk market in 1994. Given the size of the market, nature of the product, entrenched values, and level of marketing support, the following objectives were set: 1. Consumer attitudes (emotional): Improve perceptions by 3 per cent to 5 per cent against key statements from a baseline study: a. ‘Milk is cool’ b. ‘Milk is becoming more popular’ 2. Consumer attitudes (rational): Improve perceptions by 3 per cent to 5 per cent against key statements from a baseline study: a. ‘Milk is low in fat’ Commercial objective: Stabilise milk sales and consumption after many years of decline. Target Audience  The strategy was to put milk firmly back in the hearts, minds and fridges of the British public by showcasing its emotional and rational benefits through the power of celebrity. Careful selection of these ‘personalities’ was essential given broad campaign target audiences – mums (who are the gatekeepers of the family fridge) and teenage girls (the ‘mums of tomorrow’). The media channels that made up the integrated campaign also all had specific roles: - Advertising: to generate widespread awareness - PR: to amplify the reach of the advertising and to focus on a female consumer audience - Social media: to engage and inspire teenage girls - Retail activity: to reach milk buyers in an ‘in store’ environment Action Focused and creative tactics have made the ‘make mine Milk’ campaign a success across all of its channels: Advertising A CBS bus T-side deal was selected as it would deliver the best footprint against teenage girls, mums and a wider audience. It also enabled more than two medium weight bursts of activity across the 12 months – something that all other print media options did not. The bus T-sides – featuring bright, eye-catching creative work that showed our A-list celebrities with their milk moustaches – were supported by press and online ads. Awareness levels for the campaign are now at 71%. PR A variety of tactics were used to generate word-of-mouth about the campaign and its celebrities, with a focus on female consumers. 427 pieces of media coverage have been generated in 2012 through projects such as: Celebs behind the scenes: giving national and consumer media exclusive ‘behind closed doors’ access and launching impactful competitions and online videos such as Vinnie Jones as the Internets most unlikely agony uncle. Milk moments: initiatives that highlighted celebs’ love for milk and the role it played in their diets. Harnessing the power of stakeholders: we kept the nation’s dairy farmers up-to-speed on the campaign through regular communication. In return, they helped out by putting up 12-foot-long Team Milk banners on their farms – particularly in areas that were close to busy roads and the Olympic torch relay, to maximise impact and awareness. Social media Teenage girls were the focus of social media and the key platform was Facebook. Our activity focused on creating substantial communities to ensure ‘make mine Milk’, as a brand, was part of their everyday lives. Through this approach, we promoted milk, as a product, as part of their everyday diets. An engaging editorial calendar and celebrity-based content secured at advertising shoots have contributed to the campaign’s 130,000+ Facebook ‘likes’ and almost 900,000 YouTube views, along with bespoke projects such as: The Milk Challenge: getting celebrities to down a pint of milk as quickly as possible in a Top Gear-style leader-board, hosted on Facebook. The Smarter Starter Challenge: using campaign ambassador Kelly Osbourne to promote the versatility of milk at breakfast time in a week-long series of videos. Retail partnerships With Asda, we created a competition for families to win a package of sporting merchandise to tie-in with the London 2012 games. The competition was promoted on-pack, in Asda’s customer magazine and on its website. With SPAR and other convenience stores, we designed and launched packaging featuring Team Milk star Denise Lewis on the front – and hundreds of retailers put up a range of point-of-sale material across the Summer that had the words Team Milk emblazoned across a Union Jack background. Results The advertising, PR, social media and retail activity combined to achieve increases in both rational and emotional attributes, including: • ‘Milk is cool’ - up by +32 per cent since before the campaign started • ‘Milk is becoming more popular’ - up by +29 per cent since before ‘make mine Milk’ began • ‘Milk is low in fat’ - up by +20 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% higher among those ‘aware’ • Claimed usage of milk is +18% higher among those ‘aware’ The outcome of these factors is that milk consumption and sales haven’t just stopped declining – they’ve risen. According to market data from Kantar, consumption rose by +3.0 per cent overall (figures for y/e October 2011) and in the same period in 2012 we achieved a further increase on this of 0.6 per cent. For teenage girls, again according to Kantar (figures Spring 2012 vs Spring 2011), consumption has risen by a substantial +18 per cent for milk on its own and by +9 per cent increase in milk consumed at breakfast time. The ‘make mine Milk’ campaign is the only dairy marketing campaign in the UK specifically targeting this audience. An independent audit of sales figures from the MMF companies also indicates an increase in sales of 110 million litres per year. This is the first sales rise for over 20 years. URLs and links: Facebook, Official Website, YouTube Twitter The PRmoment Golden Hedgehog Awards 2014 are now open for entries. Here are this years updated categories.