A Campaign that Makes You Say “Cowabunga, Dude!”

All that & a glass of milk

From creation to consumption, a lot of fun can be had over a glass of milk or slice of cheese––regardless of what generation you’re from. We took this sentiment to the bank with our 2023 Dairy Month campaign: The Udderly Awesome 90s. Knowing one of our key audiences is Millennial Moms, we wanted to moo-ve them to action with pop culture that stirred up some nostalgia, including 90s art styles, dance moves, toys, and celebrities (from sitcom icons to musicians).

An udderly awesome design

Think of the 90s. What were people wearing? What were people watching? For this design, we thought back to our childhoods and leaned into 90s fashion: combining our Doodles with geometric patterns, nostalgic 90s gear, and neon colors.

Ever seen a cow do the cat daddy?

How about the classic dance move, the robot? Well, now you have! Our team not only gave the Dairy Doodles some hobbies—like rollerblading or jamming out to their cassette player—but we also taught them how to groove. We used Adobe Character Animate to bring Daisy the Cow to life. It was something we’d never done before, but now we have a bunch more knowledge (and Slackmojis) for the next time we need a dancing animal.

The whey of web

We wanted to immerse everyone in the fun of Dairy Month by creating a special landing page, complete with the campaign logo, classic 90s patterns, custom graphics like the Tamagotchi cow, and the beloved Dairy Doodles. It also contained a bunch of information about the benefits of dairy products, sustainable farm practices, and how farmers are keeping their herds happy and healthy.

To drive everyone to the decked-out landing page we’d created, we designed some digital ads. These ads not only followed the campaign style, but also had an element of mystery to them. They alluded to 90s celebrities who would be honoring Dairy Month… but more on that later. We saw over 1.7M impressions with 4,817 clicks and 3,878 users.

Putting the AI in “dairy”

2023 has been the year of AI. Naturally, we used that to our advantage. But that didn’t mean it was all smooth sailing. There was still a ton of creative effort on our designers’ parts to come up with the right prompts for Midjourney and then put the images through Photoshop for final touch-ups.

By taking quintessential 90s pop culture elements, including TV show references and specific art styles, we built out our social media calendar. There were Teenage Moo-tant Ninja Turtles, a cow image in the style of Lisa Frank, the Fresh Glass of Milk (a spin off of Fresh Prince of Bel Air), and more. It was both parts beautiful and a-mooo-sing! So are the rejects from our Midjourney explorations for this campaign, but that’s a story for another day…

Fresh, whole, organic milk social media

If you follow @nevadamilk on social media (which you should if you don’t already!), you know we keep our content funky fresh. Our strong social media presence has always played a huge part in raising awareness and creating a positive sentiment about dairy. People scroll through their feed, expecting to see content that they can relate to, learn from, and/or interact with. With that in mind, we knew we had to level up our game during Dairy Month.

Blasts from the past

We leaned into trends, such as Barbie, and took some inspiration from the past. Our Lisa Frank-esque and Teenage Moo-tant Ninja Turtles posts were among the highest performing ones on Instagram, and Facebook friends loved our Easy-Bake Oven reels.

Knowing social media loves its videos, we had the idea early on to have 90s icons share what they loved most about dairy products. We researched many candidates and ultimately had the opportunity to work with…

• Andrea Barber (who played Kimmy Gibbler on Full House)
• Sir Mix-A-Lot (known for his song, “Baby Got Back”)
• Chris Kirkpatrick (*NSYNC superstar)
• Will Friedle (who played Eric Matthews on Boy Meets World)

Think that’s rad? We’ve got even more gouda news for you:

• Facebook engagement increased by 76% and Instagram engagement increased by 422%.
• We launched Nevada Dairy Farmers’ TikTok account this month—and had the largest gain in followers and engagements across all social channels.
• The Easy-Bake Oven reels had the highest engagement rate (37.5%) per impressions across all platforms.

While we’re proud of what we accomplished in our online communities, we knew Dairy Month was for the masses. We sought partnerships with local businesses to bring our marketing collateral to centerstage.

A splash of cream, a helluva lotta swag

People love starting their day with a good cup of joe. Heck, most people at our agency drink multiple cups of coffee each day. That fact sparked an idea: Branded coffee sleeves would be a surefire way to spread the word about Dairy Month.

Our designers partnered with our social team to create 40,000 eye-catching coffee sleeves with QR codes that directed people to the campaign landing page. In tandem with the design phase, we reached out to numerous local coffee shops to see if they’d be interested in supplying these coffee sleeves for the month of June. Big shoutout to these incredible businesses for helping us celebrate:

• Bibo Coffee Co.
• Hub Coffee Roasters
• Swill Coffee and Wine
• LightHouse Coffee
• JoStella Coffee Co.
• Pangolin Cafe
• Too Soul Tea
• The Garden Coffee
• Coffee N’ Comics
• The Roost
• Hand Craft Coffee Co.
• Magpie Coffee Roasters
• Cafe Capello

We also asked a few coffee shops and restaurants—Coffee N’ Comics, Old World Coffee Lab, Nashville Social Club, and Liberty Food & Wine—to donate gift cards that we could include in four swag boxes that were part of our social strategy. Other than gift cards from these establishments, there were some pretty sweet swag items in the branded lunchbox: themed lip balm (cereal milk, anyone?), slap bracelets, bucket hats, socks, and stickers of our favorite Dairy Doodles dressed for the decade.

Long story short

1. This is a project that took a lot of strategy, collaboration, and agility. We’re really proud of it.
2. It’s hot AF to wear a head-to-toe cow suit in June… but we’d do it again!