Congratulations, 2007 MilkPEP Award winners!

Dairy Foods, Nov, 2007 by Mike Simmons

Halloween displays featuring mummies, chains, a haunted castle--and chocolate milk. Fun new flavors and packaging for schools, including smaller bottles. Milking the popular Milk Mustache Tour by featuring a beauty queen and the mayor. Smart partnerships with Wal-Mart, Curves fitness centers and the American Red Cross.

All these marketing ideas happily resulted in increased milk sales. The creative efforts by sales people and dairy reps across the country also brought them special recognition in the first-ever 2007 MilkPEP Awards, held July 31st at the 2007 Dairy Sales and Marketing Meeting in Minneapolis.

This brand-new awards program, was a long overdue way to applaud milk processors --and to share their ideas and success stories. As MilkPEP unveils a brand-new 2008 promotional calendar, you're wondering how you can piggyback these ideas to move more milk off the shelves. I hope the following stories from the road inspire you.

Retail winner

Janell Janz was eerily good at pushing chocolate milk as the Official Drink of Halloween. This Kemps Dairy Sales Representative scared store managers at first, with eye-catching displays incorporating free MilkPEP Halloween materials. Chocolate milk was surrounded by mummies and chains, as well as orange and black balloon bouquets. Refrigerated displays were disguised as haunted castles. Soon retail managers were grinning like jack o' lanterns. "Sales more than doubled in some stores," tells Janell. "We even needed special milk deliveries to keep up with demand."

Schools winner

For Hygeia Dairy's Hugo Valdez and J.C. Montenegro, Capturing the School Milk Opportunity meant catching students' eyes by reintroducing milk with fun flavors and novel packaging.

Working with several school districts, the team created an a la carte program featuring new lowfat milk products like half-pint and 11-ounce plastic bottles in a variety of fun flavors that rotated in and out of the line-up. Hygeia hung Body By Milk posters in the cafeterias and rewarded good milk habits with cool Body By Milk book covers. No surprise, the school districts saw an overall increase in milk consumption. "And that made everyone happy: teachers, administrators, parents and dairy processors!" smiles Valdez.

Grassroots winner

The Think About Your Drink campaign launched in January, 2007 and included the 10th Annual Milk Mustache Mobile Tour. Gary Summers, marketing director of Meadow Gold Dairies, Salt Lake City, made sure the Tour brought Utah residents lots of exciting information about what milk can add to a healthy diet. He bought 152 radio spots inviting the public to the events, which included free milk sampling, interactive kiosks, popular milk mustache photos and individual beverage analyses to gauge what consumers are pouring into their bodies. Miss Utah and the mayor of Salt Lake City welcomed a turnout of more than 1,000 people. With Gary's help, Utah's Think About Your Drink tour generated more than 1.5 million media impressions in Salt Lake City alone.

Grand Prize winner

For a program that trickled down to so many different business channels to drive sales, including retail, schools and grassroots events, Valdez and Montenegro of Hygeia Dairy took home the grand prize. Their tip? "We started with something really simple: the MilkPEP planning calendar. Using that, we identified promotions throughout the year that helped us raise awareness and boost sales," confides Montenegro.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Additionally, Hygeia partnered with Wal-Mart, and Curves fitness centers and the American Red Cross. Both retail outlets displayed MilkPEP materials--and Curves representatives handed out lowfat milk samples in Wal-Mart stores! In the first four months of the promotion alone, the dairy saw a double-digit increase.

The team also used the MilkPEP Finish Line Kit to educate local athletes on the benefits of chocolate milk as a sports recovery aid. They are still tasting victory: sales of chocolate milk pints are up 3.3%, quarts are up 4.3% and half gallons are up 18.5%.

Now it's your turn. 2008 is full of innovative, refreshed promotions to help you move more milk. Learn more about the 2007 MilkPEP Awards--and get your hands on the latest 2008 promotional calendar. Visit www.milkpep.org or ask yours truly. We are overflowing with lots of ideas to help you come up with a few success stories of your own.

Mike Simmons, MilkPEP's Director of Processor Relations, can be reached at 202/220-3563 or via email at msimmons@idfa.org.

Contributed by Mike Simmons