Clover, a leading dairy products and beverage group, has taken its Way Better branding and marketing campaign to the streets with a range of high impact, innovative billboards complementing its television, website and other above-the-line and below-the-line activations.
 
The Way Better campaign is centered around six major elements relating to Clover’s dairy products – quality, hygiene, freshness, sealfresh packaging, carefully selected producers (raw milk suppliers) (270 specially selected farms) and a secret ingredient, “love”.
 
Launched in October 2011, the animated television advertisement conceptualized by agency Joe Public for the Way Better branding and marketing campaign, has already won awards and nominations internationally and stands a strong chance of winning local awards as well later this year.
 
According to Pepe Marais, Joe Public’s Creative Director, and Jody Calvert, the agency’s Media Director, outdoor activation via billboards provides ideal extension and support for the 45-second television commercials initially flighted in October last year and the dedicated www.waybetter.co.za website.
 
“Through our outdoor activation, we want to bring some of the characters to life from the Milky Way, which is the essence of the Way Better television commercial,” said Marais, adding that this would maximize the impact and “feeling” associated with the brand.
 
Explaining the billboard activation methodology, Calvert said: “We have chosen to go with smaller and more signs on roads such as William Nicol Drive in northern Johannesburg, enabling us to introduce two to three characters at a time to our audience.”
 
Each billboard will be used to focus on a character and bring across Clover’s commitment to innovation and quality.
 
There are currently seven characters – such as the Twirling Tinas (who beat  the cream), Trodder (an elephant who stamps out butter bricks), Tubby (who makes cheese) and Clover Dover (who gives the kiss of quality to Clover products) – but more characters have been created and will be introduced later this year to enable the “magical story” to extend itself.
 
“All of the characters are original concepts and we see them having a life-span of at least five years as a central part of the Way Better branding message,” said Marais, stressing that mothers and children are the core target market of the brand and product messaging.
 
The character billboards follows on the first set which was done in June 2011 when Clover’s Way Better campaign was launched.  The rare kind of signage on the initial billboards was a first for South Africa as these were handmade, sparkling billboards decorated with sequins.  Each sequin was placed on the national billboards by hand by a team who travelled to work on each of the billboards.  Conceptualized by Joe Public, their billboards were much more costly than erecting a regular billboard, but when weighed up against the high impact the billboards would have, it was an easy decision for Clover’s Brand Manager, Sherian King to make.
 
As King explains: “Dairy products are naturally associated with childhood as well as the fantasy and imagination that go along with it. The imaginary characters developed for the TV commercial and which are now also being used in other activations, represent the dedication and expertise of Clover staff in producing and distributing top quality dairy products for consumers throughout South Africa.