• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, May 4, 2015

Dean Foods, the largest milk producer in the country, is consolidating its dozens of regional brand names under one label — DairyPure — backed by a national print and television campaign that launches today, according to extensive reports on CNBC.com and the Wall Street Journal.

The launch “is designed to catch the tailwind of a shift by U.S. consumers toward foods perceived as more natural and produced closer to home,” writes the WSJ’s Ilan Brat. “Dean will tout that DairyPure ships within hours ‘fresh from your local dairy,’ is tested to ensure no antibiotics are present and comes from cows free of growth hormones, according to executives.”

It “will automatically become a $2.5 billion brand, making it one of the top consumer packaged goods lines in the U.S.,” CNBC’s Jane Wells reports, while pointing out that “in a unique branding experiment, it will combine the DairyPure name with the local name on all labels and regional advertising.” 

The campaign’s core spot “centers around a group of teenage talking cows and combines humor with a message about health and quality. ‘Starts pure, stays pure, DairyPure,’ the ad says, before one cow replies, ‘Like, moo,’ Wells writes.

“This is a category that really needs innovation and news,” Dean Foods' Chief Commercial Officer Ralph Scozzafava tells Wells. He adds that having a unifying brand name is helpful to grocery store merchandising, too.

“We give you one brand to run, one UPC code to run, and you can now partner with other categories,” he says. 

Mondelez International’s Oreo cookies pop up in both stories, with Wells suggesting it as a likely candidate for co-branding and Brat informing us that DairyPure will, from the get-go, have annual sales greater than the all-time best-selling cookie.

Brat’s piece focuses on the eight-year quest of current CEO Gregg Tanner, a Hershey and ConAgra Foods veteran, to consolidate “the company’s mishmash of milk processors — snapped up by a previous management team over a 15-year period,” all of which were run “like separate businesses.”

“From his office window in Dallas one day in 2007, he watched with chagrin as trucks from two different Dean Foods brands delivered milk to the same convenience store. ‘It was like, boy, that looks like an opportunity,’ he said.”

The Dallas-based company currently has 31 regional and local brands of white milk around the country that will use the DairyPure name including Alta Dena, Berkeley Farms, Country Fresh, Dean's, Garelick Farms, Land O’ Lakes fluid milk, Lehigh Valley Dairy Farms, Mayfield, McArthur, Meadow Gold, Oak Farms, Pet, T.G. Lee and Tuscan.

Both pieces reference Dean Foods’ success with TruMoo, a brand of chocolate milk forged out of a similar aggregation of brands and marketed as “A Truly Good Thing” with “less sugar than the leading chocolate milk brand.” It’s on its way to becoming a $1 billion brand, Tanner tells Brat.

You might also have spotted the “Limited Edition!” green bottles of TruMoo Naturally Flavored Mint Vanilla milk at your local retailer during the St. Paddy’s Day season. TruMoo has also marketed an Orange Scream flavored milk for Halloween.

The dairy industry has been hurt in recent years not only over consumers’ health concerns but also the rise In popularity of soy and nuts milks — not only almond but also more obscure varieties such as cashew, hazelnut, peanut and pistachio. 

“Since 1970 alone, per capita fluid milk consumption has fallen from 0.96 cup-equivalents to about 0.61 cup-equivalents per day,” according to the USDA’s 2013 report “Why Are Americans Consuming Less Fluid Milk? A Look at Generational Differences in Intake Frequency.”

Dean itself completed the spin-off of Denver-based WhiteWave Foods, which manufactures and markets branded plant-based foods and beverages, coffee creamers and beverages in North America and Europe, in May 2013. Its North American brands include Silk and So Delicious plant-based foods and beverages, International Delight and Land O’ Lakes coffee creamers and beverages, Horizon Organic premium dairy products and Earthbound Farm organic salads, fruits and vegetables.

The DairyPure name has evidently been kicking around Dean Foods’ HQ for a while. An ad for a “worry-free” Dairy Pure Flip Cap bottle — “from Garelick Farms” — was published on YouTube in February 2014. The spot is also noteworthy for the voiceover announcer’s three-syllable pronunciation of Gar-el-ick. Who knew?