August 2013

Dairy farm familiesof the Southeast

Dairy Promotion News

Fuel Up to Play 60 grants continue to drive de-mand for dairy products in Southeast schools

As dairy farmers we all look for opportu-

nities to make our busi-nesses more profitable. Whether it’s looking at what we’re feeding our cows or how quickly we can get them through the parlor, we‘re always looking for ways to decrease our costs and increase our output.

It’s the same way for dairy promotion. We’re

always looking for new ways to grow fluid milk sales. We look for ways to keep the consumer coming back to buy more milk, not just a one-time promotion where they’ll go back to their old ways of substituting other beverages for milk once the program is over. We want them to change what they ordinarily do and make a new milk-buying habit.

That’s why we work with companies like McDonald’s who introduce and keep on the menu new milk-based beverages. Through our long-standing partnership with the largest quick-serve restaurant in the world, new milk-coffees, milkshakes and other menu items have overall moved 6 billion additional pounds of milk over the last three years.

Continuing with this successful tactic, our dairy checkoff has entered into an exciting new partnership with Quaker Oats. Quaker is committed to changing the consumer’s habit of making oatmeal with water instead of milk. The company believes that the best way to make oatmeal better (and grits!) is to add the superior nutrition that milk pro-vides. And for every one percent increase in oatmeal servings made with milk, that translates into 30 million more pounds of milk sold!

Quaker will have a big “Make It With Milk” promotion later this year. One supermarket chain they are working with is Kroger, one of the Southeast’s largest retailers.

Exciting Opportunities for Milk and Dairy Sales

Glen EasterSUDIA Board

President

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Chocolate milk Mondays. Yogurt sun-dae bar. Fruit smoothie bar. These

are just some of the ways Shelby County High School in Tennessee used its Fuel Up to Play 60 grant money this past school year, and, according to Christina Olssen, more of the same is planned for next year. Olssen is the coordinator of the youth service center at Shelby County High School. This is her seventh year with the school, where eighth grade students are in the same building with high school students. She works with eighth

grade students to help prepare them for traditional high school by working to remove barriers to learning, whether the students have physical disabilities, are fighting obesity or other health is-sues. Shelby County High School is one of almost 200 Southeast schools that received more than $620,000 in the 2012-13 school year in Fuel Up to Play 60 grants that were provided by South-east dairy farmers, processors and retail corporations.

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Community Outreach Trainings

Two Community Outreach trainings are scheduled in the coming weeks

for dairy producers interested in learn-ing how to develop a public relations plan for their dairy and how to hone their skills for communicating the posi-tive message of dairy and dairy farming to their communities. To learn more about Community Out-reach training, contact Amanda Trice at atrice@sedairy.org or call 1-800-343-4693.

Community Outreach TrainingWhen: Wednesday, Aug. 21

Where: Marion, Va.

Community Outreach TrainingUniversity of Kentucky Dairy Club

When: Thursday, Sept. 26Where: Lexington, Ky.

Upcoming Trainings:

DAIRY Promotion News

Olssen said she was encouraged to apply for the Fuel Up to Play 60 grant by her principal who came from a school that participated in the program. “I looked into it and realized it was a perfect match,” Olssen said. With the funds, Olssen started “Choco-late Milk Mondays” where for three weeks students were given cartons of chocolate milk as they entered their second period class. “We reminded them that if they hadn’t eaten breakfast this chocolate milk would give them a boost,” Olssen said. After she completed the Chocolate Milk Mondays, Olssen said students still wanted chocolate milk and many purchased it on their own. She also established different taste-testing events in the spring. The yogurt sundae bar included low-fat yogurt and students were offered different fruits and granola toppings. “We served 250 kids,” Olssen said.

“After this, our cafeteria staff said they could no longer keep enough yogurt in stock because all the students came in asking for yogurt on a daily basis.” She said the school has had to adjust its buying policies and where they used to sell three or four sundaes a day, they now sell between 40 and 50. “It’s a pretty significant increase,” Ols-sen said. Olssen also organized a fruit smoothie bar where students could make smooth-ies using milk, yogurt, fresh fruit and orange juice. “These programs have been such a success that we will start them again in September with our new eighth grade class,” she said. To learn more about Fuel Up to Play 60, please contact Molly Szymanski, di-rector of school health and wellness with SUDIA, at mszymanski@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

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Maybe it was dunking chocolate chip cookies in a cold glass of milk. Or

perhaps running outside to buy a choco-late ice cream cone when you heard the familiar song from the ice cream truck driving down the road. Or maybe it was hearing your breakfast cereal pop and snap as the first splash of milk hit the bowl. Whatever your favorite milk moment is, SUDIA is inviting the public to share those with others. This fall, Dedicated to Dairy, SUDIA’s program connect-ing dairy farmers with the public, will kick off a public relations campaign

that asks, “What are you dedicated to?” Through videos, YouTube ads, press releases and print advertisements, consumers will see how dedicated dairy farmers are to their cows, their milk and their land. They will also be able to share their favorite milk moment by tagging themselves in photos through SUDIA’s social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, in fun Milk Mo-ments cutouts at schools, fairs, festivals and other public events. Dedicated to Dairy is a program spon-sored by SUDIA that spotlights, through the Dedicated to Dairy website www.

dedicatedtodairy.com and on Facebook and Twitter, how dairy farmers across the Southeast are dedicated to their cows, their milk and their land. The Dedicated to Dairy website has videos and stories about dairy farm families, a myths vs. facts section and information about the care given to farmers’ cows, milk and land. To learn more about Dedicated to Dairy or to have a video made of your farm for the site, please contact Amanda Trice at atrice@sedairy.org or call 1-800-343-4693.

SUDIA launches dairy image promotion program; what are you dedicated to?

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Quaker will spend millions to run advertising and point-of-sale material to get the message across to consum-ers. And they have lots of plans to extend promotions with other dairy products in other ways, too.

Taco Bell is also coming on board, too, adding more milk, cheese, yo-gurt, and other dairy products to their menu. I’m excited about the potential with these new ways of selling milk.

With more than 50% of the food dollar spent away from home, we have to find new ways to sell our product. We have to keep looking for new opportunities to grow fluid milk sales. Working with partners with deep pockets that want to add the goodness of milk to their products and menus, is a proven way to keep milk on the public’s menu and keep them coming back for more.

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DAIRY Promotion News

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SUDIA’s new online system makes ordering dairy materials, easier

Do you want a couple of “Dairy Packs Power” T-shirts? How about a few Dedicated to Dairy caps or a “got milk?” bum-

per sticker? SUDIA has just made ordering these materials a little bit easier. Producers can now order certain materials online through SUDIA’s website. The following is a guide for setting up an account and ordering materials:

“SUDIA’s online ordering page is a convenient way for dairy produc-ers to order certain materials they need when speaking at community outreach events or promoting their dairy farm,” said Amanda Trice, SUDIA’s director of industry relations and communications.For ordering larger quantities or for items not available through the online SUDIA store, please contact Camilla Ellis at cellis@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

It is almost inconceiv-

able, but 1 in 6 Americans – and 1 in 5 children – are affected by hunger. Reach-ing out to feed these people most in need is a new program by dairy farm-ers’ national checkoff orga-nization, the National Dairy Council (NDC). NDC - which is the nutri-tion education, marketing and communications arm of dairy checkoff - along with Feeding America and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics are awarding nutrition initiative grants of $10,000 each to 10 food banks across the country within the Feeding America network. These grants will be used to provide dairy products and other needed nutrient-rich

foods to these food banks. The grants will also be used to support education programs. According to Maura Daly with Feeding America, milk is among the top five items requested at food banks, but yet only constitutes about 5 percent of the total food disbursed. “Knowing that we

have the support from NDC and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, we can leverage (these) resources to help ensure our food banks have a constant supply of milk and dairy products,” she said. “Give Good with Dairy” programs began this summer in local communities across the Southeast and the nation to drive donations of milk, cheese and yogurt directly to food banks through retail partnerships, voucher programs and other local events. Grants like these have gone to support recent nutri-tion initiatives at both the Montgomery Area Food Bank in Montgomery, Ala. and the Food Bank of Southeast Virginia in Norfolk, Va. These food banks were awarded grants to increase consumer access to healthy foods that include dairy products like milk, cheese and yogurt through interactive nutrition education, customer surveys and meals, ultimately increasing access and knowledge of dairy products. For more information, contact Mary Martin Nordness at mmnordness@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

1. Visit www.southeastdairy.org and click on the “Dedicated to Dairy” tab. From there, click on “Producer Resources.”

If you have previously set up an account, fill in your email address and the password you created for the SUDIA Store. If you have not set up an online ordering account, click on the blue “Create Account” button.

The link will lead you to an online form for you to com-plete with your name, email and shipping address. You will also be asked to create a password.

When you have completed the form, click on the “Create account” button.

An automated email asking you to verify your account will be sent to the email address you provided to create the account.

Verify your email by clicking on the link in the automated email message.

SUDIA will approve your account and will send an email with a link to the SUDIA Store in the body of the message.

Click on the link in the email message and it will lead you to the SUDIA Store website, where you can scroll up and down the page to browse materials available for online ordering.

To order, click on the item or items you would like and select the quantity of materials needed then click on “Add to cart.”

From the Shopping Cart, you will be able to either add more Items to your cart or, if you are finished shopping, click on the “Place Order” button.

Your order summary will appear with the status of your order.

Once approved, you will receive an email that contains a link that will allow you to see a summary of the materials you ordered. They should be delivered to you within 10 to 14 days.

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SUDIA aims to help reduce hunger across the Southeast with milk

Milk is among the top five items requested at food

banks, but yet only constitutes about 5 percent of the total food

disbursed.

When ordering materials, please

allow 2 weeks for delivery.

Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, Inc.5340 West Fayetteville RoadAtlanta, GA 30349-5416

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The dairy checkoff worked with national partner, McDonald’s, on

the position-ing of milk for in-store materials and commercials that promot-ed the De-spicable Me 2 movie, one of this past summer’s top grossing movies. The promo-tion featured Despicable Me 2 char-acters on McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes, milk bottles and signs featur-ing the tag-line: “Squeeze all the goodness of milk and apples into your meal!”

Additionally, there was a McDonald’s commercial featuring the Minions

– the com-puter animated movie’s popular characters – blowing milk bubbles and a downloadable milk bubbles computer app for children. The dairy checkoff’s part-nership with McDonald’s has helped create “dairy destina-tions” for the more than 27 million custom-ers who visit its restaurants every day.

McDonald’s Despicable Me 2

promotion began July 3 and concluded on August 1.

Dairy checkoff and McDonald’s partnered with top grossing ‘Despicable Me 2’ movie to promote milk

A McDonald’s commercial promoting Despicable Me 2 Happy Meals and milk features the Minions - the computer animated movie’s popular characters - blowing milk bubbles.