June is Dairy Month, a national celebration widely supported by many Midwest Dairy partners. It is a great time to capitalize on promoting dairy products in the grocery store through special deals and campaigns, highlighting how farmers responsibly and sustainably produce them. In 2024, Midwest Dairy’s grocery partners celebrated and showcased the Midwest dairy farmer.
Hy-Vee
Midwest Dairy partnered with Hy-Vee Inc. to create a chain-wide celebration of June Dairy Month. Hy-Vee Inc. is a retailer based in West Des Moines, Iowa, and operates 304 grocery stores across eight Midwestern states, including Illinois, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, Kansas, and South Dakota. The “Greetings from Dairy” campaign focused on sustainable dairy production and promoting unique dairy recipes. Featured recipes included strawberry cottage cheese ice cream, bacon bruschetta dip, and southwest avocado sliders.
The campaign included in-store displays at more than 179 stores, aisle blades with QR codes linking to recipes and a dairy farm sustainability video, targeted ecommerce banners with a “shop now” feature, two weekly print ads, a social media post with Midwest Dairy’s sustainability video, in-store events with the Iowa Dairy Princess and Dairy Ambassadors, and a Hy-Vee/Daisy Brand NASCAR partnership event at the Iowa Speedway located in Newton.
The ecommerce banners reached over one million viewers, and shopper conversions netted 24,068 basket purchases from click-throughs. Facebook posts also reached over half a million viewers. Overall, this June Dairy Month campaign generated 290,000 incremental pounds of milk.
Fareway
Fareway Inc. teamed up with Midwest Dairy to share the love of dairy and celebrate June Dairy Month. Headquartered in Boone, Iowa, Fareway Inc. operates 131 stores across seven Midwestern states, including Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota. To boost sales, Fareway launched a multi-channel campaign focusing on high-growth categories such as cheese, yogurt, and cottage cheese.
Fareway collaborated with 35 local Hummingbird influencers to capture the attention of Gen Z shoppers, showcasing how dairy seamlessly fits into their daily meals. Hummingbirds is a social media platform that recruits local consumers to share their experiences with brands, recipes, or shopping. These influencers reach thousands of local consumers to influence their shopping behaviors and drive results. The website users are 90 percent women, 75 percent aged between 24-45, and 50 percent are parents. This Dairy Month campaign amassed over 10,000 views. As part of the campaign, Fareway selected a vendor sponsor, Sargento, to support the campaign with exclusive sales promotions highlighting the love of dairy. Fareway dietitians hosted a virtual cooking class in early June, teaching 85 participants how to make Cheesy California and Italian Grinder Wraps. Attendees also watched the “Community That Cares” video, spotlighting local family farmers who sustainably produce dairy. These promoted healthy eating and reinforced community support. The campaign featured targeted email, homepage, and in-store monitor ads, complemented by social media content, recipes, and giveaways on Facebook and Instagram.
This multi-channel campaign reached an impressive 400,000 consumers and increased milk sales by over 410,000 pounds, reinforcing dairy’s vital role as a dietary staple.
Jewel-Osco
Midwest Dairy partnered with Chicago-based retailer Jewel-Osco on an omnichannel strategy. An omnichannel strategy integrates all of a brand’s channels to create a consistent customer experience across all touchpoints. Jewel incentivized stores to create dairy displays to promote their “buy $25 in dairy products and receive $5 off” promotion, which ran throughout June at Jewel’s 188 stores across Illinois and Iowa.
In addition to in-store displays, Jewel promoted June Dairy Month through its weekly circular ad, posts on Instagram and Facebook, and billboards. The billboard ad appeared on 30 boards across Chicagoland, garnering over 2.5 million impressions in four weeks. New in 2024, Midwest Dairy also partnered with Jewel-Osco’s parent company, Albertsons, and its retail media division to promote Dairy Month through online display ads. These display ads appeared on Jewel’s e-commerce website and on websites across the internet to drive traffic to Jewelosco.com. Campaign highlights included over three million impressions and a return on ad spend of $52.43x. Over two million incremental pounds of milk were sold from this omnichannel campaign.
Coborn’s Inc.
Coborn’s Inc., a retailer in St. Cloud, Minnesota, partnered with Midwest Dairy to celebrate June Dairy Month. Together, they produced the “Welcome Home to Dairy” campaign featuring interviews with local Minnesota dairy farms. Three generations of the Kerfeld Hill-View Farm family were featured in an interview. Family matriarch Rosie Kerfeld was joined by her daughter-in-law, Carrie Kerfeld, and grandson, Nate Kerfeld. They discussed new sustainable practices on their dairy farm, such as robotic milking and cover crops, to preserve their farm for future generations.
Coborn’s Inc. extended the month-long celebration through weekly online email and print ads, Facebook and Instagram social media posts, in-store scannable signage linking to dairy recipes, gas, and TV announcements, and a June Dairy Month segment on Twin Cities Live featuring Princess Kay.
This month-long campaign reached over 471,000 consumers through social and online engagement. However, the campaign did not achieve the targeted incremental pounds of milk sales projected due to economic headwinds.
Dierbergs
Dierbergs Markets and Midwest Dairy worked together during Dairy Month to promote sales through its rewards app. Dierbergs Markets is based out of St. Louis, Missouri, and has 26 locations in Missouri and Illinois.
Midwest Dairy supported a promotional campaign at Dierbergs, offering 5x points on select dairy products during the first week of June. The campaign also featured three consecutive weeks of bonus points for purchasing cheese, yogurt, and milk. The promotional campaign was shared weekly on Facebook and Instagram, through targeted emails, in the Dierbergs app, and in the digital weekly ad. Dierbergs included dairy messaging each week, along with digital offers. As a result of this campaign, over 65,000 incremental pounds of milk were sold.
