It’s a whole moo era for DDB Canada, which has been charged with growing milk consumption throughout Western Canada.
The agency’s Vancouver office has been named AOR for the newly created milk marketing entity Milk West following a nine-agency review that commenced in April.
Three other agencies were shortlisted for the account, including Dare Vancouver—which had worked with the Prairie Milk Marketing Partnership for the past 10 years—Taxi Vancouver and Rethink.
“We really wanted to make sure we looked at what the capabilities were out there, and wanted a fresh start,” said Katherine Loughlin, market development manager for Alberta Milk in Edmonton. The three-phase review concluded with a challenge to each agency to demonstrate its strategic capabilities.
“All of the final four agencies gave excellent presentations, and it was a very competitive pitch,” she said. “In the end it came down to the fact that DDB did an excellent job of presenting its strategic strengths and its ability to arrive at solutions.” DDB has also spent the past 10 years working with the B.C. Dairy Association.
Formally launched March 6, Vancouver-based Milk West is a new partnership comprised of Alberta Milk, the B.C. Dairy Association, the Dairy Farmers of Manitoba and SaskMilk. Its mandate is to create marketing programs that increase milk consumption throughout Western Canada. Dairy Farmers of Canada has also joined with the group to develop an English Canada milk campaign.
In a release, B.C. Dairy Association executive director Robin Smith said the new collective was established with the intention of creating a “new path” for the future of the four western provinces. It is not, said Smith, “a continuation of past relationships and working arrangements.”
The entity is starting “right back at square one,” said Loughlin. It has already completed a wave of research into adult women with children at home—who Loughlin called the “gatekeepers to the fridge”—and is currently in the midst of conducting research with its other major target, youth 12-17.
The research examines the psychological triggers behind milk consumption, said Loughlin, and will inform DDB’s first work, expected in early 2013.
