On Wednesday, the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and the NC Dairy Producers Association rolled out a big marketing campaign and when I say big, I mean six-foot-nine 275 pounds of big. DJ Burns, the man in the middle of NC State’s NCAA basketball Final Four tournament run, is the new spokesman for their chocolate milk promotion, and posted a video of him downing a glass of the refreshing beverage on his Instagram page. To find out more, I spoke with John Hammond of NCDA’s Marketing division.
“So we have partnered to help promote real milk and specifically chocolate milk. This is a promotion we’re doing with DJ and we also did with some female student athletes, say about a month ago.”
Hammond says the idea to partner with Burns actually originated with NC Ag Commissioner Steve Troxler.
“Our marketing specialist Jack Nales wanted to do something with women’s sports. And so you know, he promoted a chocolate milk campaign with one of our local universities. And then the commissioner had the idea of getting up with DJ Burns and seeing if he was interested in helping us to promote and how they got to be NC chocolate milk.”
Then the project started to take shape.
“So we were able to ask the folks over at Howling Cow at the NC State Dairy to utilize their facility. We met DJ down there about a week before this spot will air. A fantastic young man, came out with just a super attitude. And really he was cracking up over some of the stuff we had scripted. Here’s kind of our scripted material for you in promotion. Do you want to take it and run with it or kind of read it verbatim, and he’s like, No, I’d rather have fun with this.”
And DJ put his own spin on it.
“He took a couple of talking points and you know just ran with it. Super super, you know, authentic gentleman, loved working with him. We had a lot of fun. And he did express that this was one of his funnest promotional campaigns that he had worked on. So we were super excited.”
“If you’re looking for a way to energize and elevate your game, reach for some chocolate milk. My friend here told me that my moves on the court are as smooth as the milk. She’s funny and has great tasting milk.”
You can find the promotional spot on DJ Burn’s Instagram feed.