Alberta Milk is trying to smash perceptions among younger women in the province’s urban areas about dairy.

The organization that represents Alberta’s 500 family-owned and operated dairy producers is launching phase two of its “Smash Milk” campaign, full of colourful pastels and a “in case of emergency, break glass” conceit. The creative has scenarios wherein dairy – be it a bowl of ice cream, cheese on nachos or the milk in iced coffee – is used to soothe stressful summer situations like work-from-home technical frustrations to a summer heat wave.

The campaign carries on the “smash” concept from the first campaign iteration, which came to market in the winter. In that hero campaign, a woman swings through a glass of milk on a cheese wrecking ball, to point out that there are options beyond just consuming dairy through its beverage form.

Dan Strasser, ECD at Venture Play, the agency responsible for the campaign, tells strategy that a key insight the shop honed in on with its proposal was that younger, urban women, once they moved out of their family home, were eschewing milk. He says emphasizing the product’s versatility and enjoying it “on your own terms” was key to positioning it in a way that “smashed through,” as it were.

“It was about identifying who the right audience was to focus us, as it’s not your typical ‘we need to sell this amount of product,'” Strasser says. “It’s about moving the needle on consumer sentiment about milk. You don’t have to consume milk in a tall glass in that conventional way.”

Strasser says it was actually able to move the need for milk sentiment amongst it target during phase one of the campaign. “It absolutely landed,” he says, according to research, striking the right chord and speaking not just to, but with its urban female audience. It’s a different approach from dairy producers’ typical tendency to focus on generational farmer and product origin stories, still important ones to tell, he says, but not the focus of this work.

Last September, following an RFP process, Venture Play was chosen as Alberta Milk’s AOR, and the dairy organization cited the shop’s ability to tell made-in-Alberta stories, its veteran team, and its creative and strategic firepower.

Creative will appear on TV, online videos, digital OOH, and also three new radio spots, as radio continues to be an important medium in the province of Alberta.

According to Strasser, it’s a “significant” ad campaign in terms of size, and is happening in line with other Alberta Milk initiatives, which include top of line campaigns to experiential and social activations.