Skip the Cow was developed to encourage the switch from dairy to Flora Plant B+tter.

Dairy butter involves methane-producing cows, contributing to climate-change. Flora Plant has 75% less impact on climate change, uses 66% less land & 79% less water than dairy butter.

>80% of people who try it, love it & by switching 1kg of butter for Flora Plant, the climate impact saving equates to charging a smartphone overnight for 54 months.

A household of 4 switching from cow butter to Flora Plant for a year saves the same amount of carbon emissions as boiling the kettle 4736 times!

People loved Flora Plant B+tter once they’d tried it.

But we live in a culture of dairy dominance, with decades of advertising hardwiring us to embrace dairy without question- some of the most classic ads of all time are milk ads! The dairy industry even manages to influence nursery-age children with posters informing them milk will help them grow up big and strong. So, unsurprisingly, the majority of people are positive about dairy butter whilst plant-based spreads are viewed with scepticism..

There is, of course, a niche market for plant-based ‘alternative’ spreads but we wanted to help make plant-based mainstream.

We knew from our research that a sustainability message wouldn’t be a sufficient driver to make people change their eating habits. People don’t want to be preached to and every brand seems to have some messaging around sustainability.

We needed a fresh approach to help people rethink their dairy butter-buying habits.

Upfield, Flora Plant B+tter’s Parent Company (www.upfield.com/sustainability) is completely committed to sustainable food production and a better plant-based future across all their brands. This involves convincing people that the products taste great, and can replace dairy butter 1:1 in cooking and baking, whilst also communicating that it’s better for the planet.

The campaign objectives around shifting customer purchase behaviour towards plant-based alternatives focus specifically on three key SDGs;

Responsible consumption & production

Working to make the shift to plant-based, tastier & more affordable

Life on land

Using less land than dairy alternatives & not contributing to deforestation

Climate action

Shifting from animal-based products to reduce the environmental impact of dairy production

In November 2023, Upfield also launched the world's first plastic-free, recyclable tub for its plant butter, putting an oil-proof, plastic-free, recyclable paper solution on supermarket shelves.

Upfield has the ambition to replace up to two billion plastic tubs by 2030, replacing more than 25,000 tons of plastic waste per year.

• Brand values specific to the chosen goal

Upfield is completely committed to sustainable food production. The focus of their sustainability pillar is to build a better, plant-based future, which they do by encouraging plant-based consumption,helping people live well and contributing to making a better planet.

• Brief

We set out to convince butter lovers to try Flora Plant B+tter instead of cow butter

• Objectives

Make people rethink their habitual butter-buying behaviour by challenging their perception of butter as ‘the norm’ and positioning Flora Plant B+tter as the better option (all the things you love about dairy butter but more sustainable).

As a society, we need to think about how we can change because global warming is a big thing, that’s causing big problems.

The dairy industry contributes to this problem with methane being responsible for 25% of global warming. It’s 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat and is produced from cows‘ methane burps. When it comes to butter, one pack of dairy butter = 1 kilogram of cow emissions.

Brands can make a difference by giving people sustainable choices - and it needn’t feel like a compromise. Our plant-based spread delivers on that delicious buttery taste which people love but it’s much more sustainable..

Encouraging people to switch to just 1 kg of Flora Plant instead of dairy butter would save at least 13.1kg of carbon emissions.

People think that plant b+tter seems weird. Those 2 words together ‘plant’ and ‘butter’ seem incongruous.

But butter has always been made from plants, cows eat grass after all. When you think about it, isn't the really strange thing the fact that dairy butter is made from plants that have been through a cow’s digestive system?!

We decided to make plant butter seem less weird by pointing out just how weird dairy butter actually is. The creative idea reframed perceptions of butter by humorously surfacing its cow-y strangeness.

We knew we would raise a few hackles by challenging butter-lovers and confronting them with a contentious view of their beloved dairy-butter but we delivered our point of view in a tone of voice that was engaging and humorous.

Achieving that balance, we managed to land a campaign with sustainability at its heart that felt bold and purposeful but, crucially, non-preachy.

Research data demonstrated that the sustainability benefit isn’t enough to change behaviour. People were primarily concerned with taste and naturalness.

People also reacted negatively to the concept of plant butter. It sounds odd & butter lovers believed it would taste unpleasant. But we knew from testing that people loved the taste of Flora Plant once tried.

We needed to help people understand that Flora Plant was just like dairy butter, but without the weird cow bit.

Butter lovers aged 25-45 are open to alternatives. They might try meat or milk alternatives but don’t consider it necessary to switch from butter, or associate it with health or ethical concerns.

We challenged dairy as the norm by using its own truth against it. Squaring up to dairy butter placed us on its’ turf, cueing a set of expectations around taste and usage. Importantly we needed to get people thinking, without preaching.

We had a smaller spend than big dairy competitors for both production and media. We developed the campaign with a distinctive look and feel and unique point of view for the category.

We launched in January 2023 with an outdoor campaign, supported by digital. We then had a larger roll out from April – May with a final burst in October.

Total 2023/24 UK spend was £5.5m across high-impact OOH media, online video, social media and commuter/ roadside OOH. The success of the campaign in these channels opened investment for an AV campaign, launching in March 2024.

The campaign led to growth across the Flora brand portfolio for the first time in 10 years, re-acquiring millions of UK households and actively encouraging dairy butter buyers to trial and switch to plant-based alternatives.

Awareness and Consideration

Brand Awareness increased from 12 to 24%

Consideration increased from 32 to 40%

Source: Kantar Brand Health Quarterly Tracking up to Q4 2023

Purchase Behaviour

Sales volume +52% in the last 52 weeks

Sales value +39.5% in the last 52 weeks

Household penetration increased by 38%

And the parent brand has seen a significant uplift in sales & household penetration too (all Flora products are dairy and palm-oil free.)

Skip the Cow sets out to normalise plant-based foods with the long term expectation of accelerating adoption of plant-based products as a replacement for dairy. Consumer reduction of dairy consumption is critical in order to help reduce environmentally damaging emissions that impact climate change.

Creatively, the next phase will take the campaign into TV to help achieve further reach and impact, with accelerated investment into the work on a global scale in 2024.

Geographically, beyond the UK, we have launched the campaign in multiple markets in EU as well as expanding to new regions.

From a product perspective, we will expand the campaign to support not just plant butter but also plant-based creamers.

The production and running of the work utilised the Ad Green Carbon calculator to help measure the impact and offset accordingly.

In addition, we had the option to use a real cow in the AV communications, but chose instead to create a life-size puppeteered cow to avoid using real animals in the production. This animatronic cow is now also available for further productions as the campaign progresses.