Arla Foods UK, the UK’s largest farmer-owned dairy company, is calling on consumers nationwide to buy its dairy products and support its farmers.
It has introduced a ‘White Wednesdays’ campaign in the run-up to Christmas which it hopes will reach 40 million people with a mix of unexpected stunts, print ads, paid digital, in-store POS and PR. The first White Wednesday (December 2nd) saw the launch of a new 75 second film entitled ‘Farmer Christmas’ that coincided with the unveiling of a milk bottle Christmas tree on London’s South Bank.
White Wednesdays will now run across the remaining three Wednesdays before Christmas.
The Farmer Christmas film can be viewed at www.arlafoods.co.uk/whitewednesdays
White Wednesdays will also see Arla mobilizing many of its 3,000 farmers and 3,500 colleagues in distributing one million Farmer Christmas cards that tell the story of being famer-owned and its benefits.
The new campaign draws on insight research conducted by YouGov which underlines that the Great British public is keen to get behind farmers during this volatile period for milk prices. It found that almost two thirds of consumers (60%) say they would pay extra for dairy products and have the money go back to farmers, while almost 70% of consumers would prefer to buy their dairy products from a company which is owned by the farmers themselves.
The campaign is the culmination of a year-long program to encourage consumers to ‘Support our Farmers’ and to highlight the launch of its ‘Farmer-Owned’ marque on Arla branded and supermarket own-label dairy products. In November, a series of short films featuring five of its farmer owners to raise awareness of Arla’s cooperative principles were launched, viewed nearly a million times.
Ash Amirahmadi, head of milk and member services at Arla, says: “There is no doubt that dairy farmers are facing challenging times. Our research shows that being a farmer-owned organisation is important to consumers, and the more we can do to encourage people to buy products made by Arla, the more we’ll be supporting our farmer owners. We hope that we can look to extend the campaign into next year as we feel that is an exciting and creative way to celebrate dairy and drive awareness of how important this sector is.”
