Andrew Douglas B2B journalist, turned PR man, specializing in new media.

Nice hit by dairy farmers in major daily

A National Post reporter tried his hand milking a dairy cow in front of the snazzy, Daniel Libeskind-designed Royal Ontario Museum.

The Royal Ontario Museum

It was a solid PR hit and the Dairy Farmers of Ontario marketing team should get a good slap on the back.

They drove "seven or eight" (I'm not sure why the reporter found it hard to get an exact count) dairy cows down to Bloor Street in Toronto. They had the executive chef of the ROM and reporters try milking. What a great gimmick to draw attention to their campaign.

It turns out the reporter, Matthew Coutts, grew up on the Prairies and knows beef cattle well.

More importantly, he seems to have picked up the key message perfectly:

"It seems some frozen desserts have been tricking us into thinking we are eating ice cream when it's really made with imported oil. I feel violated."

Good copy, great picture, a hit worthy of the old portfolio... but darn, they may have missed the web opportunity. I went to the Dairy Farmers of Ontario website and didn't find anything about the campaign, even though Norma Winters of the DFO was the speaker at the event. To be fair, maybe it was a Dairy Farmers of Canada initiative, where the logo and link did appear on their homepage.

Not to take away from the PR job but in this new media world, where the lines between PR and marketing are really starting to blur, it's important that everybody in the shop is talking. Direct mail, web, advertising and PR has to work in sync.

I sure hope they grabbed some video for YouTube and are tweeting about their hit.