New TV campaign promotes British beef, lamb, and dairy

AHDB is aiming to reach an audience of 42 million adults with a new television campaign which encourages eating red meat and dairy as part of a balanced diet.

It cost £300,000 to produce and includes six television adverts, print advertising, and a range of social media content.

The first major push of the campaign will run for eight weeks until the end of February, but marketing activities will continue on social and digital platforms all year and will appear on social channels 48m times.

See also: AHDB recommends 20-33% levy rate increases to ministers

AHDB’s wider We Eat Balanced campaign is now in its third year, and for 2024 it is focusing on a “This and That” campaign, which looks at the importance of vitamin B12.

AHDB marketing director Liam Byrne told Farmers Weekly the premise of the advert is all the goodness of “this” with all the goodness of “that”.

“It’s recognising you can enjoy all the goodness of fruit and vegetables, but you can add in your meat and dairy to make it more nutritious,” he explained.

The advert will run in January as research has shown that is when people are feeling most receptive to messaging about health.

Vitamin B12

At the start of 2023, the AHDB carried out message testing to determine what drives the biggest impact with consumers.

After testing about 35 different types of messages about welfare, the environment and health, the AHDB found that health, and in particular vitamin B12, came out on top.

Vitamin B12 is an essential nutrient which is not naturally present in foods such as rice, pasta, fruit, and vegetables, but it is present in meat and dairy.

Mr Byrne said: “For this particular campaign, each protein will have its own television advert. Dairy, beef and lamb will all have their own 30sec and 10sec adverts.”

The adverts all follow a similar sequence, which meant they were all able to be filmed over a couple of days in a single studio.

The individual adverts also meant the levy board could split the cost between specific sectors depending on budget for advertising.

For the livestock sectors, roughly one-third of the levy collected is spent on marketing.

The aim of these adverts is to grow value and volume share for British beef, lamb and dairy, and to drive long-term attitudinal change.

Mr Byrne said the real sweet spot is when AHDB works with retailers to align its marketing messages about health and vitamin B12 at the point of sale in store, alongside supermarket promotions.

“That’s when we get really good returns,” he said.

Results from adverts in 2023

The We Eat Balanced campaign reached 90% of all adults (42 million) about seven times each on average, the AHDB estimates.

A smaller campaign also ran in the autumn, including an advert across video-on-demand platforms and received almost 8m impressions.

There were a further 30m impressions across social media sites.

© AHDB

The return on investment from the campaign is based on the shift in consumer attitudes towards meat and dairy.

A panel of more than 1,000 consumers were asked for their views before and after the autumn campaign.

The results found that views on meat and dairy as an important part of a balanced, healthy diet increased by three percentages points after the campaign had run.

Views that meat and dairy are rich in vitamin B12 also increased by three percentages points.

The AHDB has seen some significant shifts in consumer attitudes to both meat and dairy – particularly in the health space, with it forming part of a balanced diet and having a range of vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin B12.

It uses a third-party agency to independently evaluate the results of each of its campaigns.

Steak campaign

A campaign to encourage consumers to trade up and purchase more steak was also run by AHDB in 2023.

It brought about 500,000 new buyers into the high-quality steak category, says AHDB.