What you need to know:

• ASX-listed The a2 Milk Company is diversifying from its reach-based preference for traditional media channels such as radio, out-of-home and TV and stepping up digital, social and now influencer marketing investments.
• Joining media agency This is Flow’s latest Playgroup session on how to harness influencer marketing more successfully, a2 Milk’s latest push sees it leveraging healthcare professionals first, but increasingly consumer-oriented creators as a new media channel in their own right and not just brand ambassadors.
• The FMCG has struck a partnership with influencer marketing management platform, Fabulate, to help identify, manage and report on its next big step into the influencer marketing space this year.
• It’s a play that will give a2 Milk an ability to better engage its core customer cohort, families, while also priming a new generation of consumers more inclined to 'multimilk' consumption, including plant-based products, for when they do move into a2 Milk’s customer sweet spot.
• The exciting broader opportunity, according to a2 Milk head of marketing Louise Tomkins, is to also be able to also leverage influencers in content and campaign plays across its full media mix.
• Key to making influencers integral to the media mix is the ability to build out the more sophisticated aspects of traditional media partnerships, such as contractual obligations, plus connection of content and engagement through to conversion and sales, says Tomkins.

Healthcare professionals have been the traditional ‘influencers’ for brands like The a2 Milk Company, and legacy, reach-based channels such as radio, out-of-home and TV the go-to media choices.

But in the last couple of years, the Australian milk producer has been increasingly turning to social and digital channels to find a way to communicate the benefits its A1 protein-free product story.

Now, via a fresh partnership with influencer management platform player, Fabulate, and an integrated media play with agency, This is Flow, the ASX-listed business is taking a decided leap into the consumer-oriented paid creator space, especially as a way to prime consumers who will eventually morph into a2 Milk’s customer sweet spot. Notably, it’s an approach that also connects both the ambassadorial, relevancy aspects of influencers, with the reach and engagement they command as a growing media channel.

The a2 Milk Company is a 20-year-old Australia brand with a differentiator through its A1 protein free milk. But its ongoing challenge is how to tell that story in an otherwise a sea of white milk sameness and low-interest consumer category. 

“We know the power of the new word of mouth, which is influencers and creators, which is why we’ve been trying to get into it,” a2 Milk head of marketing, Louise Tomkins, tells Mi3.

In the last couple of years, a2 Milk experimented with different ways of using social, then more recently, influencers. It’s done this historically with health expert influencers such as nutritionist, Dr Sarah Pound.

“When we've done that sort of content, we've seen a really good engagement rate – higher than targets and the industry benchmarks,” Tomkins says. For example, in a substantial partnership last year with News Australia brand platform, Body + Soul, driven by the key metric of mass reach, one of a2 Milk’s two videos featuring Dr Pound attracted more than 60 per cent more through plays than “lofty” target expectations, she says.  

“Our question had been: How do we tell our story? Is there actually a willingness of people wanting to listen to our story? We took people we knew were very engaged with dairy nutrition and were also very good at understanding our story, then translated that into some content,” Tomkins says. “What we saw was there was this real engagement with them [healthcare professionals] from a consumer perspective.

“That gave us enough confidence to know people do want to hear our story, so what can we do next?”

The gaping hole between connecting organic influence to sales impact

More challenging, however, were forays into organic, consumer-focused influencer partnerships and social.

“We tried one sports ambassador partnership for influence and content more organically. What we found was the content was really well received by that influencer’s followers. But the challenge for us was that whole piece on how we then understand the impact, either through brand health tracking, key metrics or with sales,” Tomkins explains. “We were unable to connect what happened when that content was online, with what was going on in the market.

“Where we are now up to is trying to find consumers with that similar mindset as our dietitians – people who are foodies, people who have a passion for diary, people who have the right to be talking about our sort of milk versus just general milk, because it is these people who are interested in healthier choices.”

Such a desire led Tomkins to attend This is Flow’s recent Playgroup session covering fresh influencer research unpacking how it’s becoming a mainstream media channel as much as a content creation and ambassador mechanism for brands.

“I think that’s the biggest challenge for us marketers: There is a perception any content is good content,” Tomkins comments. “What we’re now trying to unpick is which influencers are right for our brand.”

To do this, a2 Milk has struck a partnership with Fabulate. Both sides initially picked a ‘hit-list’ of macro and micro influencers and luckily, saw a lot of crossover. For Tomkins, a key benefit of using the tech platform-based influencer approach has been agility in identifying the right types of influencers and whether they’re willing to work with a2 Milk or not. With a lean digital team, having bandwidth to manually reach out and conduct brand safety checks on influencers has been one of the hurdles for a2 Milk. 

“In the main, if we say, ‘have you heard of a2 Milk?’ many will say yes, but when we say, ‘Do you know why it’s different?’, many people will say not exactly. So it’s that layer we’re looking for: Credible creators and influencers who can tell that part of the story,” Tomkins says.

Progression has also come by recognising influencers need to be treated as a paid media channel like any other. The company's upcoming influencer campaigning will work in concert with the media planning and strategy work This is Flow delivers.

“It’s taking a bit of a leap of faith for our sort of business, which is traditionally uses radio, out-of-home and TV, and leaning more into this space of I would say are performance-oriented creators and influencers,” Tomkins says. “Being able to really clearly understand impact on either the brand, key brand health metrics or sales, is so critical. It’s been really good to work with Fabulate, to have those conversations and to make sure we choose the right creators as a first port of call, but secondly, to cover off that piece in terms of performance.”

The a2 Milk Company has previously used the Klear influencer management tool, acquired by Meltwater in 2021. “What we find is using the two has been quite powerful, because they both have different strengths as platforms,” Tomkins continues. “That tool as a starting point helped us focus more on who the right influencers and creators are.”

The “next, significant influencer test” will go live this year. How it leverages TikTok is another stratagem in Tomkins’ sights. As several marketers have told Mi3, gaps in audience measurement compared to more established social platforms such as Meta, can be an inhibitor.

“But sometimes you have to look and just ask, strategically, why are you doing these things,” Tomkins comments. “You work with creators on TikTok absolutely in line with your strategy, then get as many metrics as you can. The rest of it is about intuition – good, old-fashioned marketing intuition. Unfortunately, it won’t be perfect, it never is. It’s a combination of data as much as old-fashioned values: Are you doing it for the right strategic reasons? Is the content meeting the brief? If it is and you don’t have all the metrics, hopefully you have enough intuition and gut feel to know you should be doing this. Then the platform eventually catches up with other platforms where you get some of this data.”

Priming the next consumer

The traditional dairy milk consumers are families. There’s also a high proportion of 55+ couples and retirees who remain loyal to the category.

“What we're doing with these social things is quite interesting through this lens, because these [latter customers] are not traditionally the audiences you'd expect to be on the new social platforms. That’s one we're working out. But families? Absolutely, we feel comfortable these are great platforms for us to give them more information around the difference between A1 protein-free milk and regular milk,” Tomkins says.  

“But you have your up-and-coming consumers too. Plant-based milk is definitely stronger in that younger audience as is the multi-milk trend; they’re not necessarily one or the other. This is a great opportunity for us to be more cost effectively target the people coming into the funnel, even though they're not a huge amount of our volume as yet, to make sure when they do get to that life stage where they probably will be increasing their consumption of dairy milk, we are there as a brand in their minds, and they already know us and like us. Then it's about us converting them.”

Scaling beyond social: The contractual dilemma

One of the big brand opportunities cited during the This is Flow Playgroup session on influencers was the potential for cross-channel utilisation. Being able to harness the power of influencers in other media channels in also in the difference between A1 protein free milk and regular a2 Milk’s sights.

“For us, the exciting part is about being able to then go off platform, back into out-of-home, YouTube, even potentially having these partnerships with these creators where they get utilised through other assets we’ve got,” Tomkins says. “It’s not just that these influencers are living on social platforms. It’s what we can do to scale these activities all the way through to, and as close to, the end purchase as possible.

“I’ve been in marketing for a while, and we used to look at our plans in this schema of traditional media and digital. I’m not a big fan of that, because you don’t then get the compounding power of looking at everything holistically. What’s really exciting is the way we’re now leveraging the power of influencers so it’s not just them on Facebook or TikTok, but how we look at them as a powerful piece of content across more of our media platforms.”

Arguably just as important is the contractual hygiene factors required to make this happen. As discussed at the This is Flow event, one big transitional challenge and potential gap as influencer marketing matures for brands, agencies and influencers themselves will be contractual agreements. Tomkins agrees this is going to be interesting tension point.

“Businesses can’t just put our product out there and let influencers say whatever they want – we unfortunately can’t and don’t want to do that,” she says. “We want to ensure whatever is being said is absolutely accurate. But it does mean we have to find that point where we make it as smooth as possible to have this contractual type of discussion with people that probably traditionally haven’t had to do that in such depth and are small businesses of their own.

“We need to get better at looking at our media plans, and look at the potential places where influencers don’t just live on social platforms, but where else we would like their content to live and make sure we’re putting those into the contract from the start.”