Awarded 2006 IDFA Marketing Excellence Award for Ice Cream Marketing and 2006 PRSA Lookout Chapter Incline Award Honorable Mention

Mayfield Dairy Farms needed some help to make their feature flavor marketing campaign a little less vanilla. The traditional press release announcing 2005’s five new feature flavors just wasn’t going to get the job done. Waterhouse Public Relations put its team to work to find a fresh, creative approach to launch the feature flavors without icing the consumer market.

Objective

To successfully launch five feature flavors in Mayfield’s key ice cream markets without exhausting the interest of consumers.

Strategies

Tackling a unique challenge required a unique approach. Waterhouse PR understood that the feature flavor launch was about individual tastes and highlighting the distinctive features of each product. To that end, each flavor needed its own launch strategy which, when executed carefully over a 10-month period, maintained a steady amplitude of interest from the public and kept the spotlight on Mayfield ice cream, repeatedly freezing out the competition.

Each flavor hit the big markets with individual sampling opportunities and specially planned events. Using Mayfield’s extensive internal and external marketing resources, Waterhouse PR helped put spoons in mouths and Mayfield Ice Cream in freezers all over the Southeast.

Results

Waterhouse PR engaged its broad network of media contacts to generate special editorial coverage for Mayfield’s feature flavors reaching 11.4 million consumers. Through a truly integrated marketing campaign executed in concert with Mayfield’s advertising agency, our strategy contributed to increased total product samplings (66 percent of which were conducted at point-of-sale locations), sustained product promotion and publicity, and created excitement through continuous outreach to the consumer market. These efforts were rewarded with generous ice cream sales that topped our client’s projections by 6 percent, as well as a share in the International Dairy Food Association 2006 award for Best Public Relations Campaign in the ice cream category.