On this month’s edition of “Conversations with Dairy Checkoff,” we’re joined by Michael Steibel, Director of Marketing and Communications for the United Dairy Industry of Michigan (UDIM).
MAT: Michael, the school year is underway, bringing opportunities to share the message of dairy with the next generation of dairy consumers, Gen Z. What are some of the new ways UDIM is partnering with universities to share dairy’s good message?
Michael: UDIM has been partnering with universities to really reach that Gen Z audience like you’d mentioned. We have a couple new ones that I want to mention. The University of Michigan, we are excited to have a couple of influencer athletes on our team this year.
Our goal is to connect emotionally with the athlete influencer’s fan base so this allows us to tell the nutrition story of milk and dairy products. We’re just proud to have athlete Keke Tholl on board. She’s a softball player at U of M, as well as bringing back on board Sierra Brooks, which is University of Michigan star gymnastics player for the gymnastics team.
Also with University of Michigan, we have a big partnership this year with the U of M men’s hockey. We’re going to have in-game live mentions, concourse displays. We’re going to have social media promotions through their channels and ours.
We’ll have something really cool this year called Slap Shot for Scholarships. During each Michigan hockey game, a home game, a student will be provided with the opportunity to win a $100 gift card by shooting a slap shot into the Milk Means More scoreboard on the ice at Yost Arena, which is U of M’s home arena, and then each student that makes that shot will then be invited back at the end of the season to win a chance for a $5,000 scholarship. That’s courtesy of the Michigan dairy farmers.
We also have a video series that highlights other female athletes from a variety of sports. They get a chance to visit Michigan dairy farms. We get to interact with them and to educate them about dairy nutrition and the cool things that are going on in the industry.
We had a recent trip that we connected the dining services team, the human nutrition department, and the athletics, which we all work with separately. We brought them together, took them on a field trip to a Prairie Farms processing plant, as well as a dairy farm. They got the chance to learn more about the dairy industry, dairy nutrition, and how it impacts their everyday lives.
We have another exciting partnership with the Oakland University esports team. We are now the official sponsor of the Oakland University esports team, which is a multiplayer competitive video game activity.
Just a fun fact around this, gaming is the number one entertainment activity for kids 17 and above. It continues to become more popular among the Gen Z audience, and this is another way that UDIM is able to reach that audience.
There’s an estimated 45 million esports fans throughout the U.S., and we know that milk consumption continues to drop off if kids gain freedom to go to college to go on these teams, so we want to reach them where they’re at.
How we show up is, we have branded logos on the sleeves of the Golden Grizzly players. We’ve provided live read promotion from dairy during events. Oakland University will promote the benefits of dairy on the team’s social media pages, as well as ours. In addition, milk will be distributed to students during at least two esports events per year and we will share a presentation with them. Our team will get together with their students and their esports team, and we’re going to educate them on dairy nutrition.
So a lot of cool things happening within just those two universities. We’re constantly increasing that university outreach as we go.
Michael, you also have partnerships with Michigan State, Eastern Michigan, Central Michigan, and also you’re the official sponsor of Oakland University’s esports team. Can you share some examples of how these partnerships have influenced or reached students?
Absolutely. So going back to the esports team, we recently took them on a farm tour to educate them about dairy nutrition, how it’s going to impact their gaming results, how it’s going to–what happens on the farm, how it all works.
It’s just amazing to see the responses and the questions that these egamers have on the farm, and just, overall, uplift the dairy community as well as their sports team. It’s been a great partnership and we look forward to the future with them as well.
Thanks to Michael Steibel, Director of Marketing and Communications for the United Dairy Industry of Michigan, for talking with us in this edition of “Conversations with Dairy Checkoff.” Hear the story in the media players below, and learn more about UDIM at milkmeansmore.org.
