The new Christmas TV ad from Anchor, featuring the ‘Hugglers’ animated brand characters ‘enjoying’ Christmas, has inspired a new on-pack promotion offering consumers the chance to win an annoying plush elephant toy.

The TV ad features a baby Huggler being given the toy by granny; mum is then left to endure the resulting aural assault as her child repeatedly triggers the elephant’s trumpeting.

The promotion was created for Anchor by integrated agency whynot! thinkpeople.

Taking inspiration from Anchor’s Christmas ad, the agency brought to life the noisy little elephant in a limited edition of 5,000. Promotional packs offering the chance to win one are in store now; winners are greeted online with video snippets that showcase the full joy (or horror) of what they have just let themselves in for.

The activity runs across special packs of Anchor Spreadable and Anchor Cheddar until December 14th. To enter the promotion, consumers have to buy a promotional Anchor Christmas pack of Anchor Spreadable and enter the code from the pack along with their name and email address via the microsite www.anchorgoodstuff.co.uk/christmas. There is a ‘No Purchase Necessary’ route for consumers in Northern Ireland.

Entrants will find out instantly whether or not they have won. Winners on desktops will be shown a short video before the presentation of the prize information.

The Anchor brand is owned by Scandinavian-based dairy cooperative Arla Foods, which launched a major £6m campaign repositioning it as a “great tasting dairy brand, not just a butter brand” in June 2015. A series of TV ads aired then introduced the Hugglers for the first time. Earlier in 2015, Anchor ran a massive sampling campaign giving out 500,000 cheese sandwiches as part of a ‘Save our Cheese Sandwich’ roadshow.

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Filtered milk brand Arla Cravendale has partnered with Lionsgate to support the UK release of the film ‘Eddie the Eagle’ from April 1st 2016, and is running a major Facebook prize promotion throughout March.

A series of competitions on its Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Cravendale) will reward loyal Cravendale fans and help to draw wider milk drinkers into the brand.

Rewards on offer include: 2,000 tickets for advance screenings in 20 locations across the UK; five pairs of tickets for the March 17^th UK premiere; a private screening for one winner and 20 of their friends; 20 Eddie-themed goody bags, which include a milk drinker’s glass, a soundtrack CD and a t-shirt; a family ski holiday for four people in the Bavarian Alps.

The film tells the story of underdog Michael Edwards, known by his nickname of Eddie the Eagle, the first British skier ever to represent Great Britain in Olympic ski jumping. He took part in the Calgary Olympics of 1988 – and finished last in both the 70 metre and 90 metre events.

Edwards became a global celebrity during the games, held up by many as a heroic failure who exemplified the Olympic spirit because he kept on trying despite having no official funding or support. In fact, he was at the time the UK’s best ski jumper and set a British record in Calgary.

British actor Taron Egerton plays Eddie the Eagle in the new film, with Hugh Jackman playing his coach.

Milk plays a large role in the film as the “drink of champions” – Eddie is a devoted milk drinker and is seen consuming it throughout the film to keep strong ahead of the 1988 Calgary Olympics and drinks it to celebrate his achievement post-Games.

Cravendale’s owner, Arla UK, has created a special version of its ‘Milk Drinker’s Milk’ Cravendale TV commercial, featuring both ‘Eddie the Eagle’ and ‘The Milk Drinker’, drinking milk side by side, in a step to encourage consumers to think of only Arla Cravendale when shopping for milk. The ad will run for four weeks on UK TV from March 21^st.

Claire Mackintosh, Brand Manager for Cravendale at Arla UK, said: “We are very excited to have partnered with the ‘Eddie the Eagle’ movie. Eddie is a much-loved sporting hero, and his character is proof that milk is the drink of champions. His quirky character personifies everything that the Cravendale brand stands for, and through our social media activity we aim to encourage milk drinkers to choose Cravendale as their milk of choice.”

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Dairy company Arla has linked with a leading artisanal Philadelphia bagel shop to celebrate today’s US National Bagel Day by offering consumers free bagels topped with its new Simply Better cream cheese spread.

The tongue-in-cheek activity is very obviously taking the newly launched Arla product head to head against the biggest cream cheese brand in the world, Philadelphia, owned by food giant Mondelez.

Arla is partnering with Philadelphia’s Spread Bagelry from 7.00am today, February 9, to give the first 1,000 in-store customers a free Montreal style, wood-oven bagel topped with Arla Cream Cheese.

Don Stohrer, CEO Arla USA, says: “We believe that Arla cream cheese is what today’s consumer is looking for compared to what’s currently available in the supermarket dairy aisle. With less than half the ingredients of other common cream cheese spreads while still delivering great taste, Arla Cream Cheese is an authentically wholesome, delicious way to top your favourite bagel.”

Arla Cream Cheese comes in five flavours: Original, Light, Herbs & Spices, Peppercorn and Blueberry.

Cream cheese fans who aren’t able to visit Spread Bagelry on Tuesday can go to the Arla US website – ArlaUSA.com – to download a $1.00 off coupon and to find a retailer near them.

Arla Foods is the fifth largest dairy company in the world and is a cooperative owned by dairy farmers.

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Arla Foods UK, the UK’s largest farmer-owned dairy company, is calling on consumers nationwide to buy its dairy products and support its farmers.

It has introduced a ‘White Wednesdays’ campaign in the run-up to Christmas which it hopes will reach 40 million people with a mix of unexpected stunts, print ads, paid digital, in-store POS and PR. The first White Wednesday (December 2nd) saw the launch of a new 75 second film entitled ‘Farmer Christmas’ that coincided with the unveiling of a milk bottle Christmas tree on London’s South Bank.

White Wednesdays will now run across the remaining three Wednesdays before Christmas.

The Farmer Christmas film can be viewed at www.arlafoods.co.uk/whitewednesdays

White Wednesdays will also see Arla mobilizing many of its 3,000 farmers and 3,500 colleagues in distributing one million Farmer Christmas cards that tell the story of being famer-owned and its benefits.

The new campaign draws on insight research conducted by YouGov which underlines that the Great British public is keen to get behind farmers during this volatile period for milk prices. It found that almost two thirds of consumers (60%) say they would pay extra for dairy products and have the money go back to farmers, while almost 70% of consumers would prefer to buy their dairy products from a company which is owned by the farmers themselves.

The campaign is the culmination of a year-long program to encourage consumers to ‘Support our Farmers’ and to highlight the launch of its ‘Farmer-Owned’ marque on Arla branded and supermarket own-label dairy products. In November, a series of short films featuring five of its farmer owners to raise awareness of Arla’s cooperative principles were launched, viewed nearly a million times.

Ash Amirahmadi, head of milk and member services at Arla, says: “There is no doubt that dairy farmers are facing challenging times. Our research shows that being a farmer-owned organisation is important to consumers, and the more we can do to encourage people to buy products made by Arla, the more we’ll be supporting our farmer owners. We hope that we can look to extend the campaign into next year as we feel that is an exciting and creative way to celebrate dairy and drive awareness of how important this sector is.”

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