Cool Cow Tips Consumers to Hip, Healthy New Product

There's a new cow rustling up business in the dairy section of grocery stores these days. And, she makes that classic salescow, Elsie, look like your old-maid aunt. She's Cool Cow, a funky, sunglasses-clad bovine for the '90s, who may just be hip enough to convince kids that drinking milk is fun. Cool Cow is the name of the product she's selling, too. It's a milk that looks and tastes like whole milk, but has no cholesterol and very little fat, thanks to a butter-fat substitute called Farmelle. Milk-Made Inc., New York, is introducing the product with the aid of a P-O-P program designed to appeal to both kids and mothers.The black-and-white design that covers the cow's body and the jazzy pink lettering convey to kids and moms the modern, hip image of Cool Cow, while still making it clear that it is a dairy product. The nutritional information printed prominently on the displays and cartons lets mothers know that the milk is healthy. This modern/traditional blend is a marketing strategy that Pat Cory, Milk-Made's president, thinks will work. "The cow has an alternative look, but it's still a cow. It's a serious representation of the product," he says.Cool Cow was successfully tested in December 1993 in Fargo, N.D., capturing 10 percent of the city's half-gallon milk sales. It has since expanded to Grand Forks and Bismark. Cory says that the product was launched in North Dakota, in part, because North Dakota is a dairy state; milk products generally have high consumer acceptance there. The P-O-P program for North Dakota is designed for large supermarkets with a lot of space.A 6-foot high "Cool Cow Crossing" sign is a humorous attention-getter that draws consumers toward a tester table. Because Farmelle is new, letting consumers taste the product first plays a key role in getting them to buy it. A "Have a Cow" sign can be propped in front of a test table, behind which a salesperson dressed in a Cool Cow T-shirt and hat hands out samples. And a 5-foot-high-by-7-foot-wide three-fold foamboard sign stands on the floor and explains, in bright graphics, the details of how the milk is made. Finally, plastic stick-on hoof prints can be placed on the floor leading to the table.The design of the three-fold sign mimics that of the carton, on which the cow wraps around three sides, and nutritional information covers the fourth. The idea for the carton and the name Cool Cow were generated at Milk-Made, says Cory. Milk-Made had New York-based D-Zine design the cow for the carton. G.L. Ness Agency in Fargo then took the cow design and created the slogans and all the P-O-P materials.What market will Cool Cow be roaming into next? Cory plans to continue expanding in the Midwest and also hopes to launch the product in the New York area soon. But the P-O-P materials will be used differently in New York.He thinks that the crossing sign, which "gets lost in the superstores," will get more visibility in a small store. A slot for handouts will be added to its post. The tasting tables will not work in many New York stores, but Milk-Made plans to set them up at summer street festivals. The hoof prints won't make it to New York, says Cory. Besides being impractical in stores with heavy traffic and little floor space, their humor might go right over Manhattanites' heads. After all, how many cows does one see in the Big Apple?

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