Yeo Valley is following up on last year’s smash hit ‘rapping farmers’ ad campaign by launching a boy band called The Churned.

Featuring Aiden, Zak, Bradley and Matt, the debut single ‘Forever’ goes live during the first ad break of ITV’s The X Factor on Saturday 8 October and marks the start of an eight-week-long £2.5m campaign.

Like last year’s rap, the two-minute music video is set to focus on Yeo Valley’s West Country heritage as well as its commitment to environmentally responsible dairy farming, and will use the humour of a boy band dressed as farmers. “In advertising, you have two choices: you can force the product down people’s throat or entertain them,” , said MD Tim Mead. “We’ve chosen entertainment, so they talk about us, and hopefully achieve the same results or better. The sums we are investing will merely match what foreign-owned companies like Müller and Danone have spent every eight weeks for the last five years.”

The new campaign hopes to again generate buzz using social media. But while last year it centred on YouTube, with YeoTube generating 1.9 million hits, social media activity for The Churned will focus on Facebook with a karaoke contest.

Despite an initial spike, sales of the organic brand across milk, butter and yoghurt were flat last year, “but flat is good, as organic sales, more broadly, are down quite substantially”, said Mead. “The awareness job has done fantastically well. For a brand of our size the fact that 48% of consumers would consider buying Yeo Valley is significant.”

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