GENERAL MANAGER’S UPDATE

Dairy farm familiesof the Southeast

Dairy Promotion News

December 2014

Seven New Partnerships are Destined to Shake Up the Milk Category

College Sports Nutrition Initiative Expands to More College Campuses

CSNI InitiativeContinued on Page 2

Recently at the Dairy Management, Inc. (DMI) annual meeting, seven new partnerships were announced, designed to drive innovation in fluid milk and milk-based beverages to meet the grow-ing demands of both foreign and U.S. markets. These seven partners, supported by dairy farmers through their national promotion organization, are committing an unprecedented investment to unlock innovation and put milk back in the center of the rapidly growing health and wellness bever-age market.

The seven partners from across the dairy supply chain include Dairy Farmers of America; Darigold/Northwest Dairy Association; The Kroger Company; Maryland & Virginia Milk Pro-ducers Cooperative Association, Inc.; Shamrock Farms; Southeast Milk, Inc. and The Coca-Cola Company. These companies have pledged to work aggressively to pursue growth opportunities for fluid milk through infrastructure, capital, human resource and marketing investments.

While all the partnerships are innovative and exciting, Coca-Cola, through its Minute Maid division, announced a distribution and marketing agreement with Select Milk

Cooperative’s product fairlife. This new lac-tose-free milk with more protein and calcium will appear in stores before the end of the year.

At the meeting, Mike St. John, president of Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid division, likened the rollout of fairlife to the launch of Minute Maid’s Simply fresh orange juice in 2000. Most juice was frozen then, viewed as a com-modity by the consumer and facing declining sales. By introducing fresh, value-added orange juice, sales grew over a five-year period to make Simply a global billion dollar brand, and raise all orange juice sales.

That’s what we’re looking to do with all these new milk partnerships: grow the value-added milk business to reinvigorate the whole milk category, lifting up traditional gallon and half gallon sales. It’s a strategy that worked for the commodity coffee busi-ness, too, when Starbucks appeared on the

scene in the late 1980’s. It’s an exciting strategy and an exciting journey to embark on: reigniting the public’s inter-est in nature’s most perfect food, milk!

Cheryl HaynSUDIA General Manager

The College Sports Nutrition Initiative, better known as the college-aged brother of Southeast

United Dairy Industry Association’s Coolers for Coaches program, has recently made its way into more college and university locker rooms and athletic department refueling stations. CSNI provides protein-packed dairy snacks to college athletes, helping them recover after practices and games. Recently, the NCAA loosened meal and snack restrictions for student athletes, opening the door for milk and other dairy products to become part of their well-balanced, nutri-tious diets.

“We started this when the NCAA loosened feeding restrictions for athletes,” said Mark Farmer, assistant director of marketing and partner relations. “The program blew up because college nutrition staff and coaches wanted to provide athletes with a nutritious post-workout drink, chocolate milk.”

Currently, there are a total of 30 refrigerated milk merchandisers, or glass front coolers decorated specif-ically designated for dairy products, placed in athletic departments and colleges and universities in every SUDIA state including: Louisiana State Uni-

SUDIA GROWING DAIRY’S PRESENCE ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES THROUGHOUT THE SOUTHEAST

Milk dispensers, such as the one pictured here at Alabama State University, are popular in college and university athletic dining halls.

DAIRY Promotion News

versity, the University of Alabama, Virginia Tech, the University of Mississippi, North Carolina State University, the University of Georgia and the University of Kentucky.

Registered dietitians working for university ath-letic departments encourage student-athletes to drink choc-olate milk, which is packed with protein, electrolytes and other essential nutrients, after practices and games. Choco-late milk has been proven to help repair and rebuild mus-cles post-exercise.

The Coolers for Coaches program has been successful in high schools throughout the southeast, with 754 coolers placed in locker rooms and cafeterias.

“This program will only grow in the future. Our plan is to be present in every land grant and big state university with dairy programs, and then move on to smaller schools and athletic departments,” Farmer said. “As registered dietitians learn more about the benefits of refueling athletes with choco-late milk, the program will continue to expand.”

CSNI Initiative, Continued from Page 1

Milk dispensers and coolers (pic-tured at Mercer University, above, and Alabama State University, below) provide nutritious, wholesome milk to student athletes as a part of a well-balanced diet.

To meet the needs of an ever-changing consumer base, in November Dairy Management Inc. expanded their

Common Voice Network, an initiative of the Consumer Con-fidence program, to create more informed spokespersons for the dairy industry.

The Common Voice Network’s mission is to maintain, enhance and protect dairy’s image and position in the marketplace. The Consumer Confidence program was estab-lished to reconnect consumers with agriculture, improve dairy’s image and increase demand and sales of dairy products.

“Common Voice includes more than 100 dairy industry communication and marketing professionals who are com-mitted to sharing dairy’s positive stories with consumers, farmers and their dairy industry relationships,” said Nadine Sudnick, common voice lead and executive vice president of consumer confidence and communications for DMI.

Through recruiting and relationship-building, DMI has expanded the Common Voice Network of dairy and agricul-tural communicators to over 100 industry members who receive and spread positive dairy messaging. New Common Voice Network members include those involved in animal health, scientific advisors, industry representatives, proces-sors, school health and wellness professionals as well as local, state and national dairy organization representatives.

Common Voice Network members assist in planning communication efforts on behalf of the dairy industry,

Common Voice Network Uniting Messages about Dairy Farming

By working together, we can break through the information clutter and get the facts about

dairy to consumers in a consistent way that will help build their trust in dairy, and ulti-

mately lead to increased sales.- Nadine Sudnick

Looking Ahead: The 2015 SUDIA BudgetTotal Budget: $11,691,100

actively share information with internal and exter-nal audiences and help promote the consumption of dairy products. Members are provided with communication materials about dairy, which is often disseminated throughout their networks and spread to large audiences.

“Members collaborate on messaging, share content, help one another respond to issues and inquiries, and reinforce dairy’s good story by creating a unified voice for dairy when speaking to today’s consumers,” Sudnick said.

Through its Consumer Confidence program, DMI hopes to drive positive awareness of the dairy industry and increase consumer demand for dairy products by reinforcing dairy farm fam-ily’s commitment to delivering high-quality, safe and nutritious milk in a socially-, economically- and environmentally-friendly way. By banding together and forming a network of trained, engaged industry advocates, communication with consumers can be more impactful and influential.

Photo credit: Common Voice Network, Con-sumer Confidence, Dairy Management, Inc.

SUDIA’s Board of Directors recently approved the 2015 budget. The board meets each fall to review the budget and make adjustments based on economic changes, production levels and actual year to-date expenses. The revisions to the 2015 budget included a two percent decrease in spending, with adjustments in income and spending allocations made to focus on children and schools, consumer confidence and the national Unified Mar-keting Plan.

For more information about SUDIA’s annual program budget, please contact Cheryl Hayn at chayn@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

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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Advertisements, such as the one above, will direct visitors from Southern Living to the SUDIA website for dairy-packed holiday recipes.

Southern Living and SUDIA Build a Better Brunch

With the goal of reaching consum-ers during the holiday season,

SUDIA has partnered with Southern Living™ to encourage consumers to build a better holiday brunch.

The Holiday Brunch Recipe spon-sorship, which went live December 1, features a custom recipe tab that links visitors to recipes on the SUDIA website and two banner ads on the Holiday Brunch homepage. Each month, SouthernLiving.com is visited by over 1.75 million consumers from the southeast and over 7.3 million consumers nation-wide.

“Partnering with Southern Living™ is an effective way to drive traffic to the SUDIA website and pro-mote our dairy-packed recipes,” said Rebecca Egsieker, SUDIA’s assistant director for communications. “We are promoting the use of dairy products in holiday cooking, which will help us sell more product and promote dairy as a part of a well-balanced diet.”