Meat + Poultry - March 2005 - 98

MARKETING

The changing image of milk
Consumer trends dictate shift in marketing strategies.
Customers meander into
a 7-Eleven convenience
store during the lunch
hour. A middle-aged
man browses the
"Big Brew" section
for coffee. Construction workers gravitate to the "Big Eats"
and "Big Gulp" sections for food on
the go.
Amid this
atmosphere, where
fancy packaging
and bright colors
predominate, the
1-gallon jugs of milk in the
dairy case appear rather mundane. Yet, located a few rows
up are some interesting milk
products known as Slim Slammers. The 16-ounce, plastic containers are not overly colorful, but
the "hourglass" shape of the container - set off by a measuring-tape
image around the middle - is
intriguing. Despite the decadent flavors - chocolate fudge and French
vanilla - this product promises to
help you "get slim" because it has
"half the calories and half the carbs."
This product personifies the
new look of milk in the marketplace,
and that, in turn, is helping to reshape milk's image with consumers.
Milk is no longer the unexciting beverage that comes in bulky 1-gallon
jugs or clumsy paperboard cartons.
With better packaging and moreconvenient serving sizes, it now
appeals to the on-the-go crowd, including the young people who will
shape tomorrow's consumption
trends. And, as consumers learn more
about the weight-loss benefits of

12 FSI

FOOD SYSTEMS

ınsıder

milk, they're likely to see milk as the
perfect fit for today's healthy lifestyle.

Better packaging
Milk processors are creating distinctive packaging, using plastic,
resealable containers.
These containers are now
showing up in school
vending machines and
even school-lunch lines,
replacing the clumsy
gable-top paperboard cartons.
According to
Dairy Management
Inc., more than 1,250
schools nationwide
now serve milk in
plastic, resealable
containers in their
lunch lines.
These are showing up in retail and
foodservice outlets, as well.
McDonald's had been selling 600,000
cardboard containers of milk each
week. Now it serves 4.2 million plastic
bottles a week. Wendy's, meanwhile,
has increased sales from 65,000
cardboard cartons per week to 1.8
million plastic bottles per week.
Nutritional halo
Bob Holtcamp, director of brand
marketing for Wendy's, says his company decided to offer milk because
of the "nutritional halo" it possesses.
In January, the government came
out with its Dietary Guidelines for
Americans 2005, recommending
three 8-ounce servings of lowfat or
fat-free dairy products per day. That's
a revision upward from the two to
three servings recommended in the
last report five years ago.

MARCH 2005

And, it's not just about calcium,
says Greg Miller, nutritionist at the
National Dairy Council. Milk provides
many other essential nutrients.
People on the government's Dietary
Guidelines panel found that dairy
doesn't contribute to the nation's
obesity problem and may, in fact,
contribute to possible solutions,
based on research at the University
of Tennessee and other institutions.

Impact on food system
Whenever the consuming public
wants something, perceptive food
companies will do their best to
respond. Clearly, Americans are
becoming more health conscious,
and they're also keeping an eye on
their waistlines. Suddenly, we're
seeing some strange adaptations in
the marketplace, such as soft-drink
manufacturers adding milk-based
drinks to their product lines and
orange-juice manufacturers adding
calcium.
Milk must redefine itself in
terms of current trends or else someone else will step in and fill the void.
The dairy industry won't let that happen and has already taken steps to
spruce up its image.
Other animal-protein industries
often find themselves in the same
position of marketing a product the
same way year after year. Those industries should take notice of this
trend and see if a tweak of their image could create positive results.
By Tom Quaife
Dairy Herd Management

Meat + Poultry - March 2005

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