Insight
Malaysian Dairy market leader Dutch Lady was faced with the challenge of reduced milk consumption once kids turned 3 years old. Culturally as the child grows milk takes a backseat in Asian families, and solid food steps in to fill the nutrition gap. With average milk consumption of 1.3 glasses per week, its challenge was to increase consumption and help foster a habit of drinking milk amongst kids.
Strategy
With even six year old kids beginning to fast, even if it was just for half a day, with their parents, there was new tension for mothers. While mothers wanted to encourage their kids to fast in emulation of the Prophet, somehow they couldn’t reconcile to the lack of nutrition in-take which kids would have to go through during the holy month. Further if the kids lapsed from the fasting regime it wasn’t religiously appropriate. The brand realised that at this time the influence of mothers started to drop and kids started to copy their favourite child celebrity.
Dutch Lady decided to help kids fast and provide them with a platform to fast with this celebrity as a constant companion. Dutch Lady milk would help address a mother’s concern around the nutritional in-take, and she would be able to enjoy the fasting month with her child. Scientifically it is proven that any action repeated continuously for a period of 21 days becomes a habit and if they could encourage kids to consume milk in the morning during the 30-day fasting period, there would be a chance they would continue drinking milk even after the holy month was over.
Execution
Working with Malaysia's darling daughter Mia Sara to create 38 special videos for pre-ramadan, during ramadan and post ramadan, and these messages were delivered in a combination of formats and timings across several media touchpoints. The campaign began with Mia Sara inviting her fellow kids to join her in fasting during the Holy Month. This was followed by Mia Sara sharing tips on how to fast, and spoke about actual everyday situations which she faced while fasting. She spoke about what to do in school, and how a glass of Dutch Lady Milk allows her to continue throughout the day. Her witty response to questions posed by her mother in the video, bought a smile on everyone’s face.
The message was aired on a special Ramadan programme as a separate section. Further the brand used its Facebook platform, and targeted mothers in a time-bound manner to educate them on how Dutch Lady Milk helps take care of a child’s nutrition during the holy month. Thus Dutch Lady eased a mum's heart and helped kids fast, and fostered Milk drinking habit during the holy month of Ramadan.
Results
The unique approach to the holy month campaign touched Muslim mothers across the country, and many of them acknowledged that this was NEW NEWS, and related to the message from the cute & witty Mia Sara.
Total campaign awareness was 46%, reaching 93% of Muslim mothers approx. 3.7 million mothers via the special television buy. The well-timed digital buys further contributed to brand sales, with 15% sales coming from first time Dutch Lady Users, and 16% sales coming from competitive product users. During the campaign overall brand sales volume increased by 8.5%, which is commendable considering 70% of the country, was fasting during the holy month, and there was general decline in the sales volume across food & beverage category.