Cravendale - an Arla brand of milk

• im going to look into the cravendale brand of milk, as an example of a successful branded milk product, of which their aren't very many. much of their success is down to clever advertising and good promotion of their unique brand 

• Campaign objectives: Drive sales of Cravendale Milk and encourage UK consumers to buy into a premium brand (This is a difficult product to launch, as most consumers buy their milk based on price, and wont buy a brand that is more expensive, as they do not value milk, so cravendale is one of the first brands to be launched at a premium price)

• The ads ran in all dayparts across terrestrial and multi- channel stations, averaging around 100 ratings a week. ( It is a mass market product, aimed at a wide audience so was featured on a multitude of channels at all times including peak times. This would have been a very expensive strategy)

• Target audience: All Adults

• Channels used: ITV, C4, Five and multi-channel ( they were featured on some of the main, most watched channels to reach their audience )

• Creative agency: W+K London, Pic Pic

• Cravendale seems to me to be the most successful branded milk, with a range of ad campaigns and a specific USP, differentiating it from typical non brand milk. Its USP is the long shelf life of the milk, 7 days once open as compared to 3 days of normal milk. It lasts even longer closed, at 27 days. This is due to the opaque bottle, which keeps sunlight reaching the milk, storing it better, and due to the triple filtering which makes it extra pure, and removes a lot of the bacteria, helping it stay fresh. The ad's focused on these attributes, but delivered them in an interesting informal way.

•  Cravendale is a premium milk brand. In a commoditised and declining market. It charges more per litre than any other milk brand, because it delivers such benefits. however, if it was applied to consumer involvement theory, it would be a low involvement/rational product, these products are often chosen for their attributes, one of the most important being price. Because of this Cravendale have used TV advertising to push their attributes, the triple filtered qualities, and the longer shelf life.

•  It is unique in that most milk brands do not venture into TV advertising. The animated adverts developed a strong brand identity, with the same characters being used in the early adverts, and a similar format.

• the Brand value grew by 18.2% year on year as volume sales increases of 7% were recorded at retail. This compared with a 1.8% volume decline in milk sales as a whole.

This was a useful piece of research, as i wanted to see why cravendale has been so successful, and get some tips. from this research i think the main resons that the brand has such a success is -

- they had a unique product, with a unique selling point, that was different from the competition. they also advertised this very well so the audience were aware of their advantage over other products

- they advertised to a broad audience, on channels that reached a lot of viewers

- they made really good use of advertising, making them interesting and fun, and developing a really good strong brand image

Next i am going to analyse some of cravendales adverts, and look into the agencies that produced the adverts.