Chinese consumers care about where their food comes from. This is especially true for dairy, an industry still shaken by 2008’s shocking milk safety scandal. Every dairy company has come under scrutiny, and consumers want to know the “origin” of their products.

Local dairy leaders Mengniu and Yili, whose distribution, dairy credentials, multiple milk flavor launches and aggressive marketing spends had them control almost 70% of the market, captured the popular imagination by featuring their milk farms in Ireland and New Zealand.

Nestlé Chengzhen, a small player with little investment, was left with little to differentiate itself by 2014, and years of decline followed with -3% growth YoY between 2014-2016.

Our communication challenge was how to create a differentiated story in a category where the ‘quality of ingredients’ is all that matters to consumers. This led us to a singular objective: establishing the superiority and goodness of Chengzhen ice cream.

Our message needed tongue-and-cheek humor, with delivery by characters that people could love. Character design became key. For this we worked with Aardman—the animation studio behind the Oscar winning “Shaun the Sheep.” They designed lovable models of the Good Cow and the Bad Cow.

15 second OTV spots told the story that Nestlé Chengzhen is only made with milk from cows with good behavior, showing only good cows getting into Chengzhen.

We took the Good Cows on-the-ground to build intrigue and did over 10 sampling activations — visitors were eager to snap photos with the cows and eat a free ice cream, driving up our impact online as the experience was shared on social media.

We followed up with a billboard campaign like no other. Advice from our good cow was written for 50 specific locations around Beijing, which took the form of hyper-targeted OOH ads.