How Big Dairy Infiltrated TikTok

If you don’t know who “MrBeast” is, your kids almost certainly do. He’s massive with the Gen Z demographic, consistently trending on TikTok and YouTube, most famous for eye-grabbing philanthropic stunts or Squid Game recreations, sometimes reaching over a billion views a month. He’s also the latest influencer to collaborate with Undeniably Dairy, a massive, multiyear, marketing campaign designed to boost sagging sales of milk worldwide. 

But this campaign isn’t a ‘how do you do fellow kids’ cringey faux pax. These videos are popular, cool even: Iced coffee hacks. Cooking videos. Overly complicated debates of how to butter bread. The videos have already reached hundreds of millions of users and show no signs of stopping.

They tap into trends and challenges. In one, the Watt brothers of the NFL drink milk to overcome a hot wings challenge. In another, an influencer named Matt Peterson takes on a challenge of only eating dairy for an entire day (the title is misleading as he frequently only has a dash of dairy in his meals, including a particularly-lazily made burrito with one mere slice of Gouda). In fact, the massively-viral ‘butter board’ trend originated from a chef account that has collaborated with Undeniably Dairy seven times, though  it’s not clear if it’s a direct part of the campaign’s sponsorship.

Others tap into the specific mentality of students, claiming dairy can help “get your life together” before class or arguing that dairy can “reset” yourself after studying for high school tests, or energize you to stay up all night gaming. Still, other videos emulate a fever dream, a clear attempt to break into the zeitgeist that makes up the wacky, surreal humor of Gen Z. 

A New Form of Marketing

TikTok might be a new marketing avenue for the dairy industry, but the strategy of targeting children is nothing new. Since the 1980s, the dairy industry has consistently gone after schools as one of its biggest audiences, especially with its infamous “Got Milk?” campaign. Seemingly everyone, from Taylor Swift to Kermit the Frog, sported a white milk mustache or boasted a sugary chocolate milk campaign. 

Despite these decades of efforts, milk drinking in the U.S. has been on a steady decline, though yogurt and cheese have made up for it some years.  Plant-based milks like almond, soy and oat, on the other hand, have seen 23 percent market increases from 2015 to 2019. The plant-based milk industry is expected to reach 123 billion by the end of this decade. 

The dairy lobby has been working overtime to thwart plant-based industry progress. In 2018, dairy companies launched the “Februdairy” campaign (a rebuke to ‘Veganuary’) in order to boost sagging milk sales and push back against sustainability and animal cruelty critics. Bringing Undeniably Dairy to TikTok is their latest attempt to push the industry’s message. 

So far, the Strategy Is Working

Even though plant-based milk sales show no signs of slowing, there are signs that the Undeniably Dairy campaign is reaching its intended audiences.

According to Edelman, an advertising firm that collaborates with the Undeniably Dairy campaign, they’ve achieved 72 million total video views. By the marketing firm’s metrics at least, the campaign was a success. It’s unclear how the firm measured these shifts but  Edelman claims their target audience is now 6 percent less likely to be interested in plant-based alternatives to dairy, 25 percent more likely to believe that dairy cows are treated humanely, and 14 percent more likely to believe that dairy farmers take care of the environment. 

In terms of actual sales, the picture isn’t clear yet.  But the dairy lobby reported a slight annual increase this August. Some forecasters suggest the industry may make modest gains in the next two years. 

The real money maker for U.S. dairy is in exports. Globally, dairy consumption is climbing. The American dairy industry is eager to put milk in the hands of untapped markets, especially in the East. China, despite being the world’s second-largest economy, is historically low in dairy consumption. 

At the 2021 Dairy Congress, industry professionals described China and Southeast Asia as having “huge potential for further growth,” specifically highlighting sugary products with packaging designed to be easily held by children. 

So far, it’s working. Imported dairy is on the rise in China. The prospects for continued growth are strong, and TikTok just might be the perfect tool. TikTok, whose parent company, ByteDance, was founded in China, will surpass 835 million users within a few years.

The Undeniably Dairy campaign is already building virtual inroads, with videos of Vietnamese yogurts, Korean influencers, Taiwanese street foods and boba cheese tea. 

A Campaign for the Modern Era

Clever advertising is nothing new for the dairy industry. What’s different about this campaign is that it feels less like a campaign than previous attempts, and that could make it more successful. 

While TikTok advertisers like Undeniably Dairy are required to be transparent about sponsorships, this campaign is purposefully less obvious than “Got Milk” was. There is no central slogan. There is no one specific target audience (videos are just as likely #trump2020 as they are #ramadan) The messaging and tone of the campaign is as varied as possible. Dairy is throwing milk at the wall and seeing what sticks. 

The dairy industry benefits when consumers don’t investigate the impact behind their products. The average TikTok user may not even be aware that they are witnessing a coordinated social media campaign every time they open their “For You” page and see silly videos of milk chugging, cows lip-syncing to meme songs or #relatable content. And that’s by design. 

Sentient Media reached out to MrBeast through available channels for comment but received no response. Undeniably Dairy directed Sentient Media’s inquiry to USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service.

This piece has been updated to correct that 1/5 of all milk production comes from small dairy farms, not that 1/5 of all dairy operations are small farms with less than 200 cows.

Written by: Björn Ólafsson - Ortiginal Post