Meet the world’s first milk sommelier

Baggrund

Consumers considering buying Arla LactoFREE milk was in decline. Why? We know from research that the main shopping barrier is that consumers don't think Arla LactoFREE milk tastes good. But we knew buyers did! Therefore, our objective embarked us on a journey to recalibrate and enhance our consumer’s perception of taste.

We knew that we needed more time with consumers to change their perception of taste. The current mix of campaigns and assets on Arla LactoFREE was rather brand and product-led. And while that has performed excellent at establishing brand awareness to 86% (2023) it has fallen a bit short on lifting consideration levels. We knew from our partnership with Google Creative Works that longform story-led ads are the most effective in lifting consideration. So, we decided to develop a campaign where creatives and media was designed to impact exactly consideration.

Arla LactoFREE milk is not only for consumers who are lactose intolerant. It’s an option for consumers where health is important and for those open to explore alternatives to conventional diary. The best penetration opportunity for this is among the 25-34-year-olds making them the core audience of our campaign.

Next step was to identify the platforms best fitted for delivering engaging longform ads and a high reach among all potential category users. Having a longform approach also meant what we would challenge the norms for advertising on platforms. Doing that we needed to carefully tailor creatives to fit user behaviouristics and media context. The production budget was limited, so we went for a cross-channel campaign on only YouTube and TikTok to have the resources to go very native in our assets.

Løsning

If there ever was a place to go really niche - let’s say on something like a milk sommelier - it would be YouTube and TikTok. YouTube and TikTok are the places for immersion, new trends, and exploration. It’s platforms where culture comes to life and where users truly engage in content and spend hours.

We welcomed Sune - the world's first milk sommelier. His quirky personality and niche, like really niche, profession fits right into the platforms.

Our longform approach on YouTube was to dial up the human and emotional handles in a story-driven universe where the brand and products were in the background to leave the spotlight for our larger-than-life character.

Once the character was in place, we worked on integrating the brand into the universe to craft a rich story with the right hooks to hold attention. This was executed by building a storyline around our Milk Sommelier Sune before his ultimate downfall when realising his preferred taste of milk is actually Arla LactoFREE.

Furthermore, we wanted to harness the effectiveness of CTV through YouTube. With more time to fill we designed hooks for every attentional window throughout the ad and we even optimised the creative between flights to maximize impact. Most of the YouTube budget was allocated for CTV because of continuously learning and great impact.

Our assets for TikTok were designed not break the flow but adapt to the platform. We copied the look-and-feel of TikTok by leaning into known formats as challenges and stitches. We designed for entertainment to grab attention from the first second, but at the same time infuse brand and product as part of the story to keep users engaged and make them stay.

We were very consistent in being story-led and treating the product as a story element. If we had been product-led on shortform assets we could have produced for more channels. But that would not have been the most effective way of building a strong consideration campaign for Arla LactoFREE milk.