BC Dairy Association has launched an off-beat campaign that depicts adults embracing their inner child.
Three television spots, “Cop Car,” “Hotel Lobby,” and “Jumbotron,” are shot to look like police dash-cam footage, security footage, or video from a Jumbotron. For example, in “Hotel Lobby,” security cameras from various spots in a hotel show a man wearing a onesie getting a snack from the vending machine. The spots end with the super, “Put your adult on pause. Drink milk.”
“We’ve always felt that milk wasn’t something that you had to put in someone’s face all the time,” said Dave Eto, CEO of BC Dairy Association. “In fact, we know from research that when you’re just talking about those factual components about milk, it gets to the boring scale really fast. So we went back to this delivery where you’ve got this spot on TV, you don’t even know what it’s for, and at the very end, it’s ‘drink milk.’”
That approach was used back in 2003, with BC Dairy’s “heads on feet” ads depicting what life would be like without a body. In 2005, the organization launched its cavemen campaign, with humorous, animated spots showing the demise of cavemen who made poor beverage choices, such as pop.
Eto said the new campaign targets parents, with a particular emphasis on women between 29 and 49. “We want them to have a sentiment about being a kid is a fun thing and having milk is also a fun thing,” he said. “From our research, we know that happiness and pleasure—particularly with something as potentially boring as milk—is what really motivates our audience.”
This is the first time in four years BC Dairy has launched a campaign specifically for the B.C. market. For the past three years, it’s been part of the Strategic Milk Alliance, along with Alberta Milk, SaskMilk, Dairy Farmers of Manitoba, and Dairy Farmers of Canada.
Since 2013, Strategic Milk Alliance has been running campaigns in English-speaking Canada under its “Milk Every Moment” platform. At launch, the campaign focused on childhood nostalgia and all the silly things kids do.
In 2015, another heartfelt campaign reminded consumers how well milk goes with some of their favourite foods, at any age.
The three-year agreement with Strategic Milk Alliance expired in July, and BC Dairy decided to go in a different direction. “The Dairy Farmers of Canada, which represent the Eastern portion of the Strategic Milk Alliance, wanted to focus more on males and wanted to have a slightly different creative direction than what we wanted to do,” said Eto. Its most recent effort is a parody campaign called “The Milk Glass,” which pokes fun at product launches in the beverage category.
“We thought this year, because the timing was appropriate, we would take a break and try and do something that was more specific to the B.C. perspective and [in line] with BC Dairy Association [such as] more of a focus on women.”
BC Dairy’s new campaign, created by DDB Canada in Vancouver, also includes preroll, OOH and digital banners. It launched on Oct. 10 and will run for eight weeks. OMD Vancouver handled media planning and buying.
