Advertising Analysis of Cheese Ad Campaign
...s with their counterparts in less- hospitable climates. One heifer, for example, becomes distressed when she flashes back to a blizzard in an unnamed cold state where she lived before moving to California. In a second ad, two bulls stand on a hillside and discuss the superiority of California “babes.” The ads have been well received in focus groups. “You have your babies and your puppies, and it seems cows get a similar emotional response,'' Freeman said. They “create affection for California cheeses in a big way.'' The ads also piggyback on widespread feelings of superiority among Californians. Although Wisconsin is still regarded here as the “gold standard'' for cheese, California is making head way with these creative ads. The cows personify what Californians perceive about California. We like to call our relatives on the East Coast in the middle of the winter and gloat that it's 70 degrees here. The California Milk Advisory Board, which produced the ads, credits the commercials with helping California close in on Wisconsin, the leading cheese producer with more than 2 billion pounds of cheese in 2001. California farmers produced 1.6 billion pounds. The new campaign from Dairy Management Inc. targets adults ages 25-54 and is designed to stimulate U.S. cheese demand and increase at-home cheese consumption from USDA's 1997 per capita estimate of 28.6 lbs. to 31 lbs. by the year 2000. In 2003 Californians consumed 30.8 pounds of cheese. The $55 million campaign is based on an18-month segmentation study done by DMI involving nearly 5,000 consumers. The study identified two significant segments of cheese consumers: "Cravers," who love to eat cheese straight off the block, and "Enhancers," who prefer cheese as a main cooking ingredient. These two segments represent 44% of all at-home cheese consumption, and "offer the greatest long-term growth potential for dairy farmers and the cheese industry," says Dick Cooper, V.P. of cheese marketing, DMI. 5 But with any campaign that is too successful comes negative groups. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and author John Robbins of Santa Cruz, using California's strong consumer protection laws, plan to ask a San Francisco Superior Court judge on Wednesday to ban the Happy Cows ads. They say the ads are false, unfairly favoring California cheese over other states' cheeses and mislead consumers about environmental damage from the dairy industry. But most California dairy cows live not in rural pastures, but in filthy, grassless lots where they are forced to give too much milk and are separated from their calves too soon. "Increasing numbers of the public do want to know how the food they eat is produced," said Robbins, son of a co...