Dairy Farmers of Ontario is not expecting adults to begin drinking milk with special occasion dinners but hopes its new advertising campaign will get adults to increase their daily consumption.

The Boomerang Campaign, which asks, ‘Isn’t it time you came home to milk?,’ is targeted to adults 25-49, a group that has numerous beverage options from which to choose, such as alcoholic beverages, coffee and tea.

Other competitors such as ready-to-drink iced teas, fruit juices, energy drinks, and soft drinks have experienced a growth in consumption of 10% to 60% over last year.

Roberta Jessup-Ramsay, Dairy Farmers of Ontario advertising manager, says the marketing organization will spend twice as much on advertising to adults this year than in the past.

‘We’ve always had an adult campaign,’ Jessup-Ramsay says.

‘The dairy farmers gave us some extra money this year and we chose to put some of it toward increasing our adult campaign to bring it closer to the amount of support we give our other younger target groups,’ she says.

The adult target group is roughly about 31% of the population.

They drink about 20% of the total one billion litres of milk consumed in Ontario each year, but, most importantly, they are the parents of the children who drink about 50%.

‘We had to choose whether to advertise to them as milk drinkers or gate keepers, and we chose to speak to them personally about why they might choose to drink more milk,’ Jessup-Ramsay says.

Jessup-Ramsay says Dairy Farmers of Ontario research found that most adults really like milk and believe they are drinking it, but, in fact, they are consuming only an average of three-quarters of a cup a day, well under the two to four servings a day recommended by Canada’s Food Guide.

The magazine component, a major part of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s adult campaign, rolled out in September issues of 15 Canadian consumer magazines such as Chatelaine, Cottage Life and Saturday Night.

Ads will be running for the next nine months.

Five executions were created for digest-sized publications and three for full-size magazines in addition to newspaper advertising.

The campaign began in July with the introduction of three 30-second television commercials scheduled to rotate for two flights of 13 weeks, with support from interior transit posters.

Animated visuals are used across the Boomerang campaign.

The television spots show a person flying away from and returning to a huge glass of milk as the benefits are expounded on in voiceover.

Each 30-second commercial consists of more than 350 original hand-done watercolor drawings.

The same visuals are used in the print ads.

Creative comes from Watt Burt Advertising of Toronto, with art direction from Jim Burt and production by Frances Smith.

BBDO Canada manages the account and handles media placement.

Dairy Farmers of Ontario is the marketing organization for the 8,500 dairy farms in the province.

It was formed last month by the merger of the Ontario Milk Marketing Board and the Ontario Cream Producers’ Marketing Board.

Next month, the Dairy Farmers of Ontario moves its attention to the young adult and teen segments with its annual fall promotion using ‘Milk Energy’ as its theme.