Title	OLD MILK
Brand	COOP
Product/Service	COOP BRAND
Category	B02. Promotional Item Design
Entrant	EDELMAN London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation	EDELMAN London, UNITED KINGDOM
PR	EDELMAN London, UNITED KINGDOM

Name	Company	Position
Mattias Ronge	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	CCO
Stefan Ronge	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	CCO
Joachim Ewert Barrén	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Account Director
Simon Kraft	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Art Director
Anna Werkell	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Copywriter
Sebastian Brännén	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Art Director
Sofie Segerborg	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Senior Media Supervisor
Jonas Axblom	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Senior Content Strategist
Rasmus Keger	Edelman Deportivo / Edelman	Creative Director
Marie Wedin	COOP	Marketing Director
Sofia Borgblad	COOP	Project Manager
Anna Rasin	COOP	Communication Director
Ann Persson	COOP	Press Secretary
Anneli Bylund	COOP	Sustainability Strategist
Annika Ulfvin	COOP	Head of Digital Editorial Office
Elsa Andersson	COOP	Content Manager
Hanna de Ron	COOP	Web Editor

Background

Situation Food waste is a global problem and Sweden is no exception. 38 percent of the food in Swedish households is wasted and unlike what people in general think, households are responsible for more food waste than businesses. A reason being is that people tend to throw away products that have passed their over-cautious best before dates, without smelling or tasing them first. Brief Coop, the second largest grocery chain in Sweden, known for its sustainable practice, wanted to raise awareness about food waste in an engaging way, and by doing so being perceived as the most environmentally conscious Swedish brand within FMCG. Objectives Reach: 5 million earned-media-impressions (about half of Sweden’s population) 20 news-articles Interaction: We wanted to create a physical interaction with the audience that could be evaluated through tangible results. Brand awareness: Adding innovation and curiosity to Coop’s already trusted brand within sustainability.

Describe the creative idea

If people stopped relying on best-before dates, food waste would decrease significantly. What if we could find a way to remind people to smell and taste the food before throwing it away? We created Old Milk, a perfume that smells just like milk gone bad. Making it the first scent in the world people can use as a reference to know when their milk is drinkable or not. The perfume worked as an entertaining and unexpected way to reminded people to use their noses when determining when a product is ready for the trash. To increase the surprise and shock factors, we packaged the fragrance like a premium-brand perfume. By developing the perfume and by being fun and non-preachy, Coop sparked huge interest around food waste in a new way. Most importantly, they created a unique experience for the target group, that generated engagement towards sustainability and Coop’s brand.

Describe the execution

The scent of Old Milk was created by a professional perfumer, who got the assignment to recreate the smell of undrinkable milk. The development took nearly 10 months and resulted in 200 bottles and 110 000 editional samples. To appeal to our conscious audience, our approach was to piggyback on typical premium-perfume aesthetics in everything from the product design, to all our units, placements and media-choices. We launched by sending out the beautifully packaged perfume to influencers and journalists. We also pushed an online-film. This way, the perfume and Coop’s important sustainability-message was all over social-media and relevant platforms – making it global news within days. We supported the initiative with smelly ads in lifestyle-magazines, billboards in Sweden’s hottest neighborhood and glossy samling-events in fancy shopping districts. All the attention for Old Milk lead people to the campaign-site, where they could learn more about food waste and order a perfume-sample.

List the results

250 million earned media impressions (compared to objective 5 million impressions 213 media articles in 25 countries 8 000+ scent samples requested via campaign microsite in week 1 50 000+ visitors to the campaign microsite in week 1 96% of coverage mentioned we should start using our senses before throwing away food, in connection to Coop– proof the campaign message was impossible to miss or misunderstand. Global interest: Samples requested from Germany, France, The Netherlands, USA, India, Australia and China, as well as Sweden Coop brand perception as a modern company that takes responsibility for the environment, up 5% in Q3 compared to Q2 (with no other sustainability campaigns running). This outperforms any previous purpose campaign by Coop. Old Milk perceived to have a clear sustainability message. Old Milk was less than half as annoying as previous initiatives, indicating we stayed clear of guilt tripping or boring our audience.