Canadian dairy lobbies get surreal to highlight the benefits of milk

Anyone who has ever spent time in Canada has likely seen an ad or two for one of the country’s surprisingly strong dairy lobbies. But a new campaign for a couple of western provinces’ lactose groups is departing from tradition, adopting surrealist themes to drive home the importance of dairy. Created by Canadian production studio Dear Friend and directed by filmmaker Grayson Whitehurst, the new work for BC Dairy and Alberta Milk called “Make It With Dairy” is made up of four distinct 15- and 30-second films, each of which centers on a world without dairy products. (Hint: it doesn’t seem like a world you would want to live in.) In the 30-second anchor spot, titled “Grandma,” an elderly woman is shown dunking a cookie into a glass of water. But when her grandson tries to stop her, a narrator chimes in, saying “Dunking cookies without milk is like…” before cutting to the young actor lying beneath a lawn sprinkler, and then cutting back to him on their living room couch, now soaking wet. In one of the 15-second spots, “Nuts & Bolts,” a woman who’s fresh out of milk moves to eat a bowl of dry breakfast cereal, only for the same narrator to say “Cereal without the milk feels like…” and then cutting to a pile of metal hardware pouring out of her mouth. And in another, “Slide,” a South Asian man struggles to suck a glass of blended mango through a straw, with the narrator saying “Mango lassi without yogurt is like…,” cutting to a scene of the actor awkwardly trying to shimmy down a bone-dry water slide. The “Make It With Dairy” campaign has recently begun to air on TV in Canada’s two westernmost provinces, British Columbia and Alberta, as well as appearing online.

Canadian dairy lobbies get surreal to highlight the benefits of milk

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