British Athletes Unite for Team Milk

The Milk Marketing Forum is gearing up for another successful burst of advertising for the "make mine Milk" campaign.

British sports stars have come together to form Team Milk, whose aim is to educate the nation about the health benefits of consuming low-fat milk.

The latest famous faces to front the campaign are: sporting legend Denise Lewis; amputee sprinter and long jumper, Stefanie Reid; and cyclist Ed Clancy MBE. Each will don the famous milk moustache.

Completing the team are up-and-coming freestyle swimmer Jazmin Carlin and current Commonwealth and European 110 metre hurdle champion, Andy Turner.

The team can already be seen on dairy industry vehicles, while advertising on iconic poster sites around Great Britain and the sides of over 2300 double-decker buses begins today.

Their goal is to highlight the health benefits of consuming milk that is low in fat and high in nutrients to the British public.

The "make mine Milk" campaign has been going from strength to strength since it launched in April 2010. Awareness of the campaign, monitored by Researchcraft, has reached 52% among the British public, with 72% of female teenagers aged between 13 and 24 saying they are familiar with the campaign.

Furthermore, latest market data shows that sales of milk have increased 2.5% in the 52 weeks ending June 2011 compared to the previous year.

Sandy Wilkie, chairman of the Milk Marketing Forum and sales and marketing director of East Kilbride-based Robert Wiseman Dairies, is pleased at the progress the campaign has made over the past 16 months.

He said: "Milk has always had positive associations with sport and is an important part of many athletes’ diets.

"It is natural that after so many high-profile celebrity faces, we add some of the country’s top athletes to the roster of stars that have supported the ‘make mine Milk’ campaign.

"This is the perfect time to show our support for British sport. We hope that Team Milk will inspire families across the country to incorporate low-fat milk as part of a healthy and active lifestyle."

Denise Lewis OBE has remained in the public eye since retiring from athletics. She was a runner-up in the 2004 series of Strictly Come Dancing and is now a pundit for BBC Athletics.

As a mother of three, she has her family’s diet to think of as well as her own. Denise said: "I love milk, I have done since I was a child and I have passed my love for milk on to my own children.

"I hope that Team Milk will encourage others to enjoy milk, whether it’s on their cereals in the morning, after sport for hydration or, my personal favourite, in a hot chocolate with nutmeg before bed."

For Ed Clancy MBE, low-fat milk is a vital part of his training regime. He said: "Signing up for Team Milk was a no-brainer for me as milk is such an important part of my diet.

"After a tough training session I mix up a protein shake with semi-skimmed milk. It’s perfect for keeping the body hydrated and healthy and helps to keep me at the top of my game."

The "make mine Milk" campaign was created by the Milk Marketing Forum, which is a consortium of leading dairy companies comprised of Arla Foods UK, Dairy Crest, First Milk, Milk Link and Robert Wiseman Dairies, with support provided by Dairy UK and The Dairy Council.

Of the £7.5 million total spend for the campaign, one-third comes from European Union funding.

Find out more about the ‘make mine Milk’ campaign,  which will run, initially, for three years in England, Scotland and Wales.

"The White Stuff" celebrity milk moustache campaign in Scotland was an initiative from the Scottish Dairy Marketing Company with support from the EC.

By the year ending December 2009, the long-term decline in total fresh milk sales had been reversed with a significant increase of +3.4% in sales of milk in Scotland against the base year of year ending March 2003 (source: Scott Montcrieff, independent auditors).

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