Target Market
by Pamela Accetta Smith
Processors and industry organizations appeal to the
tastes of youth.
Young adults possess
incredible purchasing power. And dairy processors have discovered the value
of putting a sizeable portion of their budgets up against this demanding,
and often finicky, demographic.
There is an incredible array of products in the dairy
case for kids and teens alike — from yogurts and smoothie drinks to
flavored milks and on-the-go snacks — that are capturing the hearts
and stomachs of today’s young generation. But marketing to these
youngsters can be complicated. It often takes the help of an industry
organization — whose primary mission is to heavily promote the dairy
message — to really drive product purchasing.
Almost 90 percent of teens don’t meet the
recommended daily intake for calcium, yet experts are calling for kids to
get even more. The 2005 USDA Dietary Guidelines highlight calcium as a
“nutrient of concern” among children and adolescents and
increased the recommended dairy servings to three per day for ages 8 and
up. To help parents help their kids get the calcium and nutrition they
need, some processors are marketing the healthful benefits of dairy while
producing appealing products.
Ramping up the nutrition message is Northfield,
Ill.-based Kraft Foods Inc. As part of its Sensible Solution marketing
initiative this year, the company is phasing out advertising for certain
products in media primarily aimed at children ages 6 to 11, including ads
for not-so-healthy snacks such as Oreo cookies and Kool-Aid. During the
year, Kraft will shift its promotions in these media outlets to its
products that meet new nutritional criteria derived from standards set by
the recently released guidelines and government authorities.
Kraft will also add a Sensible Solution label on
products for both kids and adults that meet the nutrition criteria,
including Kraft 2% Milk Shredded Reduced Fat Cheese. In 2006, the company
plans to end advertisements for all products that do not meet the Sensible
Solution criteria.
Taking its commitment to improved nutrition and
calcium consumption to the formulation front, Kraft has doubled the calcium
in traditional favorites such as Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and Kraft
Singles.
Industry organizations agree that capitalizing on
dairy’s nutrient profile is part and parcel to marketing to the
younger generation. Leading the way when it comes to targeting youth,
especially teens, is the national “got milk?” Milk Mustache
Campaign. Over the years, the campaign has embarked on numerous
teen-oriented efforts. Funded by both processors and producers through
MilkPEP and Rosemont, Ill.-based Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), the campaign
is one of the most well known and influential ad programs.
Rolled out by MilkPEP more than a decade ago, the
campaign continues to focus on milk's healthy profile as its marketing
strategy, with different twists and celebrity spokesmodels. The ads have
been successfully linked to increased milk consumption and awareness among
teens.
“Regarding teens, MilkPEP’s marketing goal
is to educate teens on milk’s nutritional benefits and relevance
through the ‘got milk?’ campaign, as well as by working with
processors to accelerate innovation and identify growth
opportunities,” says Corinne McGarrity, senior marketing director for
the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), Washington, D.C.
“MilkPEP is currently supporting the ‘Fuel Up With Milk’
online auction and Healthy Schools Challenge program nationally. This
program is an effort to promote milk and encourage a healthier learning
environment in schools. It leverages MilkPEP’s NBA Rookie sponsorship
to reach an important audience that young professional athletes connect
with — teens.”
IDFA kicked of the Healthy Schools Challenge with a
media event in Denver at the 2005 NBA All-Star Weekend on February 18.
“To tip off the Challenge, we had Carmelo Anthony from the Denver
Nuggets team with other NBA Rookie All Stars to shoot for $50,000 and
$1,000 grants for schools from their hometowns,” says McGarrity.
“A dozen camera crews attended the event, and we have generated
65-plus media placements to date and counting.”
McGarrity says schools across the country are truly
doing great things to enter the challenge and encourage students to be
healthy and fit. In New York, for example, students at Long Beach High
School want to fund a program that teaches younger students the importance
of healthy eating and being active. In Atlanta, Sutton High swapped out
potato chips and doughnuts for healthier items in its cafeteria. In
Phoenix, Washington High will use its $1,000 grant to purchase new vending
machines to offer students and faculty healthier food and beverage choices.
And in Chicago, students at Murray Language Academy will use the money to
help provide healthier lunch items like salads and fruit.
MilkPEP is also working with Tremor, a Proctor &
Gamble marketing unit, to help MilkPEP connect with teens on the importance
of drinking three glasses of milk a day. “Tremor maintains a
relationship with a group of teens that have signed up to provide feedback
on new products and ideas,” says McGarrity.
“The company also knows this group will advocate
ideas that appeal to them to their peers. In previous testing that MilkPEP
has done with Tremor, working with this teen network to offer up new ideas
or information that encourage them to drink more milk, proves to be a very
effective program within our national marketing mix. Not only does this
program influence Tremor’s teens to get healthier with milk, but the
message is spread throughout their broad social networks as well. Tremor
will be introducing a new ‘challenge’ to their teen panel this
spring that will help them understand the benefits of drinking three
glasses of milk a day.”
Meanwhile, beyond the 3-A-Day of Dairy projects, DMI
has been busy on the youth-marketing front. The organization helped
McDonald’s launch a new single-serve flavored milk product into all
of its franchises and continues its tireless vending initiatives and school
milk programs.
Marketing to Kids from the Ground Up
The Geppetto Group,
a firm based in New York City that handles marketing geared toward
children, teens, young adults and moms, has developed a proprietary
discipline called Echo Branding.
It’s a process that begins with the creation of a
unique, “meaningful insight” that’s owned by the
client’s brand. The insight is then executed in every corner of a
kid’s life so that it echoes in every part of a kid’s life.
“One of the reasons kid’s marketing is different than marketing
to adults is because kids have so many rituals and behaviors that we can
latch on to and connect with,” says Rachel Geller, chief strategic
officer at the Geppetto Group.
Geller says her team asks the same double-sided
question of every brand they develop: what does it do (in terms of
taste, flavor and packaging), and what does it do for me? This question is
especially relevant during the development of packaging.
“There is so much a marketer can do to say to
kids, ‘We do something for you that no adult brand can do,’
whether that entails creating a beverage package that easily fits in a
kid’s hand or backpack,” she says.
The adult beverage market is heavily influenced by
health-conscious consumers. In the kid’s beverage segment, this is
even more true. There are tremendous opportunities for
“better-for-you” kid’s beverages — as long as
they’re executed with care. “Marketers are wary of marketing
drinks to kids because they’re worried about having a sugar or
caffeine profile that could set off a negative PR backlash for what is most
likely a small entry in their portfolio,” Geller says. “We have
talked to kids about beverages and we found that kids really want
better-for-you drinks that they can call their own, but there’s a
real problem: All of the words marketers use to talk about better-for-you
say to kids ‘diet,’ ‘low fat,’ and kids don’t
want to ever hear ‘less’ anything. We found that all the words
say to kids usually boil down to ‘less taste’ and ‘less
fun.’ We’ve been working to try and figure out how to create
better-for-you beverages that are all about ‘more,’ which is
what kids want.”
When it comes to the packaging, Gellar says it’s
important to give kids and moms clear brand messages. “Marketers
often think kids’ packaging needs lots of color and clutter, but kids
can’t put it into the shopping cart without first asking mom, which
means the packaging has to be that much more memorable so they know what to
ask for specifically, as opposed to generic colors and graphics,” she
says.
Geller also encourages marketers to look at the
tried-and-true ways that have worked with kids, like character development.
In the end, Geller says it’s fine to look for
something new and unusual to use as your brand hook, but it’s best to
look at brands that have stood the test of time and look into the brand
creation methods of the past if you’re really looking to create a
time tested brand, as opposed to an in-and-out promotion.
Excerpted from
Beverage Industry magazine, January
2005.
Brandless Marketing
Education programs help processors improve school milk
and teach children to make healthy food choices.
The Milk Processor
Education Program (MilkPEP) is offering several regional seminars as part
of its school improvement program to help milk processors make even more
headway with schools. The seminars, scheduled from March through May in
cities across the country, will feature an overview of the entire
“Capturing the School Milk Opportunity” program and sessions
that focus on specific sales opportunities.
“School lunch lines, á lá carte
lines and vending machines are the front line for milk with kids and
teens,” says Victor Zaborsky, senior marketing manager for the
International Dairy Foods Association. “Getting more kids to like
milk at school will not only lead to increased milk consumption at school,
but also may result in higher consumption away from school.”
To develop the content for the seminars, MilkPEP
talked with many processors and school districts that have taken
significant steps to make milk more competitive with other beverage
offerings. MilkPEP says there is no single fix for school milk, so
materials include a variety of suggested tactics processors can use to
better service their school customers.
The seminars will be held March 30 to 31 in Boston,
April 19 to 20 in Pittsburgh, April 27 to 28 in Chicago and May 4 to 5 in
Milwaukee. For sessions or more information, contact Victor Zaborsky at
(202) 220-3515, or visit www.milkpep.org.
Nutrition Fruition
“Healthy Choices, Healthy Me!” — a
first- and second-grade nutrition education program that reinforces
language arts and math while teaching health in an innovative way —
has received exceptionally positive marks in a formative evaluation by
WestEd, a non-profit research agency with a specialty in education program
evaluation. Developed by the Dairy Council of California, the program is in
its second full year in distribution.
“We are pleased to see that our programs have
such a positive effect on students’ eating patterns,” says
Peggy Biltz, chief executive officer of the Dairy Council of California.
“We are especially pleased with the impact the program has on
children's understanding of the importance of including milk and dairy
products in their diet.”
The evaluation shows, for example, that consumption of
milk among second-grade students during breakfast increased nearly 10
percent up to two months after students completed the program's curriculum.
Consumption of yogurt products increased 6 percent and cheese consumption
increased nearly 4 percent two months later, suggesting retained behavior
change, the council says. In addition, knowledge about the function of
foods, such as the understanding that milk builds strong bones, increased
significantly.
For more evaluation results or “Healthy Choices,
Healthy Me!” program ordering information, visit
www.dairycouncilofca.org/edu or call (888) 868-3083.
Milk Expands its Reach
Vend channel plays key role in marketing to kids.
Recent findings show
that milk is inching out other beverage choices in school vending machines
throughout the country, especially in America’s Dairyland —
Wisconsin.
Indeed, two-thirds of Wisconsin’s high schools
have milk vending machines. And milk product selections in today’s
modern machines are vast, ranging from chocolate to cookies and cream, to
nonalcoholic egg nog to lowfat and whole white milk.
According to Laura Wilford, director of the Wisconsin
Milk Marketing Board’s (WMMB) state Dairy Council, the state has 365
milk vending machines in high schools. As a moneymaking project, says
Wilford, Future Farmers of America clubs operate about half of the vending
in Wisconsin schools while school foods services operate 40 percent.
In a state that claims milk as its state beverage and
the dairy cow its domestic animal, dairy producers quickly got behind the
effort to bring milk machines to schools. WMMB pays $100 to schools that
install milk vending machines, says Wilford.
Nationwide, there are more than 7,000 machines
dispensing milk in schools, most of which have been installed over the past
three to four years in an effort to push kids toward a healthier diet.
And, encouraged by a milk industry study that shows
children drink more milk when it comes in round plastic bottles, a growing
number of schools are ditching traditional paper half-pint cartons.
Already more than 1,250 schools have switched to
single-serve bottles, a significant jump from 2000, when there were none,
according to the National Dairy Council.
Though plastic long has been the favored packaging for
soda and other drinks, schools sought bottled milk only after a 2002 Dairy
Council study found milk consumption increased 18 percent in schools that
tested bottles. The study also found that children who drank bottled milk
finished more of it.
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