Making the grade

Dairy Field, Apr 2002 by Cook, Julie

SPECIAL REPORT

Marketers set their sites on luring savvy, on-the-go teens to dairy products.

No matter what you call them -- Generation Y, Nexters, the Day Care Generation, Millennials or the Net Generation - there are two indisputable facts about the group that followed the much maligned Generation X into the world. Their numbers are huge - far closer to that of their Baby Boomer parents than that of the Xers - and they have grown up accustomed to having attention heaped upon them, since even before they were born. Remember the yellow "Baby On Board" car window signs of the 1980s? That trend heralded the arrival of the current crop of teenagers.

What's more, these young adults possess immense purchasing power. Whether spending their own money, culled from allowances or part-time jobs, or guiding their parents in making family-oriented purchase decisions, teens play a key role in a vast number of transactions every day. No wonder so many media messages are targeted at the teen audience - Britney Spears for Pepsi, Brandy for CoverGirl, Jennifer Love Hewitt for Neutrogena, Jessica Biel for L'Oreal. And that's just the girls!

Indeed, marketers far and wide have discovered the value of putting a hefty chunk of their budget up against this large and in-charge generation. When done correctly, the return on investment can be quite impressive. That raises the question of just exactly how well the dairy industry is doing when it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of teens.

"When I look at the dairy case, I see a wonderful array of products for kids -yogurts and smoothie drinks and flavored milks and so forth that really appeal to the under 12 set, but I don't see as developed a product line for teens, which speaks to an enormous opportunity," says Julie Halpin, founder and chief executive officer, The Geppetto Group, a New York City-- based advertising agency, specializing in teens and kids. "Product manufacturers in the dairy category are a little bit slower to recognize the teen opportunities than they have been to recognize the kid opportunities."

That's not to say that the dairy industry has completely ignored the teen market. On the contrary, Halpin is impressed by the efforts of the milk industry and MilkPEP, in particular, in reaching out to teens. Across dairy as a whole, however, far more efforts have been undertaken to target children and adults than teenagers. Take yogurt, for example. Yoplait's Go-Gurt, Dannon's Danimals and Stonyfield's Yo Squeeze are all clearly kid-friendly. Meanwhile, Yoplait's Expresse, Dannon's La Creme and other products are admittedly geared toward the adult market.

Typically, dairy processors build a great relationship with kids in their early years, only to let it falter when they reach their teens. Consequently, they find themselves spending billions of dollars trying to rebuild that loyalty among adults. The result is wasted effort, wasted dollars and wasted time when teens could be consuming dairy products.

Case in point: milk. According to Corinne Schwartz, marketing director for the Washington, D.C.-based International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), the milk industry loses about half of its consumers during their teen years, when they switch to beverages perceived as more cool, hip or adult, like soft drinks, juices and energy drinks.

Although some people perceive teenagers to be a fickle crowd, they are actually at an ideal age for building lifetime loyalty that just may cross over into the next generation, reports Abe Sendros, market research analyst, McCormick Flavors Division, Sparks, Md. He believes marketers are making a huge mistake by allowing consumers to simply drift away once they reach puberty. Dairies would fare much better, he reasons, if they worked to maintain that hard-won loyalty and perhaps even strengthen it during the teen years. That way, consumers would carry their love of dairy into adulthood and subsequently introduce their own children to their favorite products.

Cracking the Code

Leading the way when it comes to targeting teens is the national "got milk?" Milk Mustache Campaign, sponsored by MilkPEP and Dairy Management Inc. (DMI). Over the past several years, the campaign has embarked on numerous teen-oriented efforts, ranging from sponsorship of Britney Spears' "You Drive Me Crazy" concert tour to flavored milk promotions featuring stars and prizes from the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Now in its fifth year, Scholar Athlete Milk Mustache of the Year (SAMMY) program awards college scholarships to 25 high school seniors who excel in academic performance, athletic excellence, leadership skills and community service. In addition, applicants must submit a 75-word essay on how drinking milk has become a part of their life and training regimen.

"It's really recognizing the best of the best," says Schwartz. "That's the image that milk wants to portray, giving kids the nutrition they need in order to live that balanced lifestyle and help with that achievement."