Grassroots Dairy Promotion
Consumer Contests Warm Up Winter
What better way to generate interest in dairy than by staging a contest? Bring out the competitive spirit in your local community and watch dairy sales soar! Depending upon the type of contest you undertake, it may be fairly simple or quite involved. Regardless, here are a few suggestions for staging a successful contest.
- Plan well in advance!
- Choose your date carefully, checking for any conflicting events in the community.
- Decide early who your target audience and participants might be. Notify the appropriate groups who may want to participate.
- Search for a co-sponsor and/or outside funding.
- Encourage consumer participation by awarding prizes and publicizing them in advance.
Contest Ideas
- Dairy Bumper Sticker Contest
Distribute dairy bumper stickers to consumers. Involve a local radio station, award prizes to car owners who have the dairy bumper sticker on their car. Announce winners over the station. - Dairy Poster Contest
Hold in an elementary school. Ask students to draw pictures of their favorite dairy food, cows, calves, etc. Judge entries and award the winners gift certificates to a local ice cream shop. - Dairy Essay Contest
Follow same format as above, or run through a local newspaper. - Dairy Coloring Contests
Hold at schools, restaurants or through the newspaper. Provide a cow coloring sheet or dairy coloring sheet to children, and on a specified date collect all pictures and judge them in categories like: (a) prettiest, (b) funniest or (c) most colorful. For newspaper contests, place an ad including the picture to color. Have entries mailed to the coordinator’s address. - Identify the Cheese Varieties Contest
Place chunks of 10 different types of cheese on a table for consumers to view. Ask them to identify each kind on a written ballot. You can do this by just allowing them to “see” the cheese, or you may allow them to taste. Those guessing the most varieties could win a prize, such as a free five-pound wheel of cheese. - Dairy Trivia Contest
Conduct over a local radio station. Every day during a specified time, the announcer asks a “Dairy Trivia” question over the air. Award dairy product prizes to callers who correctly answer the questions. An extensive list of dairy trivia questions appears in this section. - 3-Every-Day of Dairy Collection Contest
Hold in schools for youth groups. Ask children to save 3-Every-Day of Dairy logos for a specific period of time. Award prizes to the individual, class or group with the most logos. 3-Every-Day of Dairy logos must be obtained from product cartons. Award dairy product gift certificates or dairy T-shirts to winners.
Coloring Books Available as a Downloadable Resource 
Mid-Atlantic Dairy Association added the “What’s Up With Milk” coloring book and the Dairy Fun Pad as downloadable resources. These coloring books are favored by kids who enjoy learning more about dairy farming and where their milk comes from. “What’s Up With Milk” is a 12-page coloring book that tells the story of milk from the cow to their kitchen table. The Dairy Fun Pad is an 8-page coloring pad that teaches kids about milk through fun activities and puzzles.
Click here to view the downloadable resources available.