To Canadians, milk was looking boring, simple, and outdated. What was once a classic staple was losing cultural relevance and quickly being left behind in favour of cool new dairy alternatives. With everyone jumping on hot new trends, milk was suffering an ongoing decline and a slip into obscurity.
No Fixed Address was enlisted to turn milk’s fortunes around by correcting low consumption trends and harmful perceptions by reclaiming milk’s cultural relevance and category dominance.
First, we had to see where things went wrong. We undertook extensive research with Northstar Research Partners to understand the root cause of the consumption decline and identify positioning opportunities that could steal back the spotlight from dairy alternatives.
We found out that Ontarians still understood milk’s inherent and well established nutritional values and were more likely to attribute nutrition with milk over dairy alternatives. Unfortunately, historical strength just wasn’t enough on its own to drive consumption. Ontarians are choosing milk products based on how ethical (14%) contemporary (11%) and crafted (5%) they are, and there were the places dairy milk had fallen behind.
This was the insight we needed to begin our strategic development, choosing contemporary as the value milk could affect the most turnaround in given its importance to consumers and the historical knowledge that ethical is a thorny territory. From there, we investigated how we could modernize milk through the lens of nutrition to play up milk’s undebatable strength.
We found our answer in a cultural analysis of modern nutrition. Through online research everywhere from reddit threads to influencer vlogs, we identified “superfood” as the culturally relevant key we needed to launch milk’s new identity. Milk has always been a superfood, but now we had the right way to describe it. Given milk’s unique breadth of usage occasions and usage application on top of its nutritional benefits, we tightened the screws on ownable strategy by qualifying milk as “the most versatile superfood.”
In short, our insight revealed that we needed to contemporize dairy milk without losing sight of our nutritional benefits so we crafted a strategy that aligned dairy milk with contemporary expressions of nutrition and celebrated dairy milk’s incredible versatility.
In order to reposition dairy milk as a versatile superfood, NFA developed an overarching campaign theme and creative platform that explored milk’s endless possibilities. Positioned as a consumer challenge, we asked our target to consider “What Can’t Milk Do?”
The platform and messaging was vibrant, energized, youthful and authentic, lending itself to a full 360 integrated campaign.
We launched with a bold, :60 second anthemic cinema spot that served as a manifesto to everything milk can do. Through fast-paced, high-energy cuts, the spot demonstrated all the ways milk fits into modern life.
We extended our reach by developing an equally energetic :30 second cut-down for TV, highlighting some of the most memorable scenes. Furthermore, we created proclamations and comparisons for all the unparalleled ways milk fits into our lives, shared through OOH billboards and TSAs across the province.
We took a social-first approach by creating engaging content designed exclusively for each platform with timing, style, and messaging tailored for hyper-targeted audiences on each to show examples of milk enhancing experiences through comparisons of universal and versatile moments.
The campaign extended even further through earned and experiential. We partnered with Refinery29, as both content partners and an activation sponsor at the coveted 29Rooms in Toronto, an interactive and sensorial art exhibit.
And our influencer work we partnered with nine social influencers to push messaging based on versatility and modernity. Through curated experiences, each influencer could speak to how milk enhances their everyday.
Finally, all content drove to a landing page where consumers were encouraged to explore an endless scroll of milk’s benefits.
Overall, the campaign was a huge success. It ranked in over 240,000 paid media impressions, plus an additional 7,629,021 earned impressions. Creative assets tested above norms with an Awareness Index score of 10 and for short-term sales, the ad was shown to have a likelihood of an 89% increase.
Our activation with Refinery29 drove a 94% increase in awareness, with 32% of attendees classifying dairy as a superfood. Consideration for dairy the milk of choice jumped following the event, with views on alternatives dropping 13%.
Most importantly, the campaign shifted perceptions for milk across the board in key categories (+5% for versatility, +5% for contemporary, and +7% for nutrition), which was determined through quarterly brand tracking.
