Making a childhood staple last the test of time

People seem to stop drinking milk in the UK after their teens – after a certain age it just drops off the radar. Lakeland Dairies had grown a sizeable business providing milk and milk products to a wide range of catering organisations and manufacturers – especially in dairy creamers, but felt that there was an opportunity in the market for a genuinely healthy and natural milk drink that could appeal to adult tastes and needs. They wanted to begin with flavoured milk, but more grown-up and less artificial than the current market offering. But that still meant a huge shift in people’s attitude. To make the challenge even greater, they had no retail experience or presence to leverage. They approached Dragon Rouge to see if we could help create a brand that changed the way people think about milk.

The urban cow

First we looked at breaking in to the adult consciousness, beginning with the obvious and correct symbol to communicate ‘natural’... the cow. But we changed her context, made her adult, urban, sophisticated, clearly humorous and tongue-in-cheek too: this was now all about transformation, looking twice, thinking differently. Milk thriving in a modern lifestyle. ‘Thinking differently’ was drawn out as a strapline (printed upside down of course – we wanted to turn the category on its head after all) to accompany an alliterative name with a strong ring that performed extremely well in testing: ‘Modern Milk’.Somehow the clash between this age-old substance and the word ‘modern’ makes you stop and want to know more; the irony is meant to make you smile. Add in a little Irish charm (that’s where it’s from) and clear health benefits, and people begin to sit up and take notice.

Ever-growing thirst

The strategy for creating demand was to target independents, have an engaging presence at festivals, universities and big stations, and let blogs, Facebook and opinion-formers drive interest through word of mouth. It’s working. Launched in October 2010, the drink is ever more popular... a glance at the Twitter or Facebook sites would tell you that, as would a trip to selected Tesco stores, where the handy 330ml bottles are now also to be found. Still on the edge, just at the moment, but there’s no doubt about it. Milk is back on the radar.