Eighty-eight percent of consumers use online recipes, which is up 54 percent compared to a year ago. Checkoff has identified this as an opportunity to engage with consumers as they are planning meals and looking for recipes, making it easy for them to increase their purchase of dairy products.
In September and October, Midwest Dairy partnered with Chicory, a third-party vendor, to drive increased sales of dairy products as a solution to consumers’ back-to-school needs. When consumers search for recipes that meet their needs online, they might search “cheese” or “weeknight dinners” to find usable recipes. This back-to-school activation targeted ingredient search terms as well as recipe categories and usage occasions. Recipes that had milk, cheese, or yogurt, along with usage occasions like “weeknight dinners,” “healthy snacks,” or “yogurts, smoothies, and bowls,” showed dairy messages. This messaging highlighted dairy’s nutrition, protein, and probiotic benefits while delivering eye-catching graphics. When consumers responded to the recipe by clicking on “shop milk” or “make recipe,” they were able to add those ingredients easily and directly to their online grocery cart.
Results
This campaign drove 12,733,902 impressions, resulting in almost 4.8 million incremental dairy items going through the register. This campaign strategically ran simultaneously with other retailer activations in the Midwest Dairy region to increase the impact on overall dairy sales. An additional campaign with Chicory will continue to run through the holiday season, supporting recipes that feature milk, cheese, butter, cream cheese, cream, and sour cream.