July 14 2023 08:00 AM

It is a sign of the times — even ice cream has a place within the zodiac, and it is a fun way to connect with young dairy consumers.

July is National Ice Cream Month, and there is no better time to figure out which flavor aligns with your Zodiac sign.

Did you even know that was a thing? I didn’t.

It may make more sense if you were part of Gen Z, who bring astrological and horoscope connections to their daily lives. In fact, the astrology market is pretty big business. It was valued at $12.8 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach $22.8 billion by 2031.

This interest serves as inspiration for the dairy checkoff to reach Gen Z in a way that’s modern and relevant to their world. You can check out how we’re using this insight on our channels such as Instagram where we ask:

“Which ice cream flavor are you based on your zodiac? Are you a Cancer Salted Caramel? Gemini Neapolitan? Libra Cookies and Cream? Find your ice cream flavor based on your zodiac and share it with your friends! Or you can just go out and buy it because guess what? You deserve it!”

There are other ice cream-focused efforts in July that may seem a little more familiar and down to earth. We are promoting “Ten Incredible Things You Didn't Know About Ice Cream” on our Facebook page. List-based articles such as this are extremely popular with Millennials.

Another initiative you’ll see this month is a guide to making ice cream from cottage cheese. It might seem unusual, but this has been a hot trend among younger consumers. The hashtag #cottagecheeseicecream has more than 36 million views on TikTok and #cottagecheeserecipe has 87 million-plus views on the same channel. We’ll ride this momentum with a new video on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube later this month!

Concentrating on consumers

The checkoff’s consumer-focused social media efforts are delivering results.

For World Milk Day on June 1, we posted this globe video across our Undeniably Dairy channels, and it clicked with people! It received more than 22,000 views with state and regional checkoff teams such as Milk Means More, Florida Milk, and Dairy MAX sharing it as well. By the way, the whole world rallied around World Milk Day, delivering more than 1.35 billion impressions — 33% more than last year.

Also, our ”beauty shots” video featuring model-like dairy photography received more than 3.5 million impressions across our Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Pinterest channels. This approach takes a cue from the type of photography influencers post to entice followers, but we put dairy at the center, and it became our top performing piece of content during June!

To learn more about your national dairy checkoff, visit www.USDairy.com/for-farmers or to reach us directly, send an email to TalkToTheCheckoff@dairy.org.


Don Schindler

The author is a Senior Vice President of Digital Initiatives at Dairy Management Inc.



..