Groups of penguins go by a handful of terms. When they're in the water, a group is called a raft. On land, they're referred to as a colony, rookery or, perhaps most adorably, a waddle. Whatever you call a mass of penguins, Dairy Foods recently added four more seabirds to their ever-growing collection of Golden Penguin awards. This time, we won gold awards in the Overall Marketing Campaign - Manufacturer and Social Media Campaign categories and a silver award in the In-Store Display category.

Each year, the National Frozen & Refrigerated Foods Association (NFRA) awards recognizes excellence in successful merchandising and promotion during June Dairy Month with the Golden Penguin awards. Land O'Lakes, Inc. has won 18 awards in 15 years.

There's something even more special about this year's awards. Land O'Lakes had the highest scoring entry in the category to win the Overall Marketing Campaign - Manufacturer award. The "best of the best" according to the NFRA.

"Our cross-functional team, including Marketing, Sales and Integrated Marketing Communications, continues to leverage June Dairy Month to partner with our customers, connect with consumers and drive sales," says Chris Scheid, director of customer teams for Dairy Foods Retail Sales.

The awards reflect the hard work by employees across Land O'Lakes on our social media and digital marketing campaigns, consumer engagement, in-store displays, product placements and more. Here's how we did it.

Social media & digital marketing

Ads are everywhere these days. It's hard to break through all the noise. Despite this challenge, our Dairy Foods Marketing group delivered results. Our digital reach across streaming media, banner ads and email reached an astounding 2.2 million impressions. During June Dairy Month, our digital coupon was activated 155,000 times with a 99 percent print rate and a 5 percent redemption rate.

"We were above average on both print and impression rates," says Bob D'Imperio, national team leader, retail operations. "It's one of the best ways to rally customers and consumers around June Dairy month."

Another way we engaged audiences was through spots on the Westwood One radio network. Seventy percent of all spots ran during the two key drive times for radio: morning and afternoon. We also took part in the #JuneDairyMonth Twitter party, which garnered more than 6,100 uses of the hashtag and engaged roughly 225 users.

Let's not forget about exposure on the Mr. Food Test Kitchen TV show. Multiple LAND O LAKES® products were shown in the Mr. Food Test Kitchen's June Dairy Month segment, which received more than 5 million views through TV, newsletters, websites and social media channels.

We shared our farm-to-fork story through our World Milk Day social campaign and June Dairy Month blog posts. World Milk Day saw 717,000 total impressions on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The campaign also reached its goal of donating $20,000 to the national 4-H youth organization. And Beth Ford's blog post, "Help us raise a glass of milk," was shared more than 800 times.

"Our social media efforts really paid off this year," says Bob.

In-store displays

For June Dairy Month, we partnered with stores to create eye-catching displays promoting LAND O LAKES® butter in major retailers across the United States.

"The fact that we won the In-Store Display award in the silver category is significant," says Bob. "Especially since this was our first June Dairy Month with Advantage [our new broker] representing us at retail."

With that in mind, Bob and his team devoted extra effort and energy to drive the displays. They also worked with retailers that were former award winners. Displays incorporated a variety of June Dairy Month point-of-sale materials such as branded balloons, garland, shelf tags and other materials.

"Retailers' ads and these displays help drive dairy traffic and sales during the month of June; it's an excellent opportunity to partner with our Customers in between our key Easter and Q4 events," says Bob.

"Our less seasonal items, such as spreadable butter and Kozy Shack, give us a good anchor to leverage with our customers to drive displays in stores," adds Chris.

These efforts worked—sales for June 2017 were up 2 percent compared to 2016.

We win together

The biggest accomplishment for Dairy Foods this year was winning the Overall Marketing Campaign - Manufacturer award.

"It was a first for us," says Chris. "Winning the overall marketing award reflects the breadth, depth, and quality of the campaign our team delivered. It was an honor for Land O'Lakes to be recognized.

"These awards speak volumes on how well we work together," he concludes. "We're better together. And we win together."