Saturday, February 16, 2008

LACTROL© Mooves



When you haven’t had a chance to use a cow or a pig in an ad campaign for a couple of decades, it’s nice to put ‘em up on the board. So thanks to Houston agency CMS for getting me involved, along with designer/art director Dan Fisler, in creating this new campaign.

Now appearing in ethanol-related publications, the new ads for PhibroChem’s LACTROL antimicrobial gave me a chance focus on consumers: Cows, pigs and chickens. (There’s a third ad with the chicken, that didn’t make it out of the hen house.)

As usual in business-to-business advertising, this wasn’t a straightforward assignment. PhibroChem Division of Phibro manufactures this LACTROL brand of virginiamyacin to effectively control the bacteria that occurs when corn ferments into alcohol. The bacteria reduces the production of ethanol.

At the same time, it contaminates “distiller’s grains” – the afterproduct of ethanol production that is used for animal feeds. Which means that animal feeds could be contaminated as well. Use LACTROL and ethanol producers can produce uncontaminated byproduct, which they can then sell for safer feeds.

Market-proven LACTROL also happens to have a “No Objection” letter from the US Food and Drug Administration. It’s a safety point and a selling point…the reasons behind PhibroChem’s moove into the feed contamination issue. (There’s another one of those awful puns – mark it up to Saturday.)

I’m glad to have had the chance to create the headlines and copy – a well done to Fisler for the art direction.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would personally like to see this letter. Actually the letter was from MANY years ago when the company wasn't even Phibro. Recently the FDA told them they were NO LONGER ALLOWED to use that letter because it was FALSE ADVERTISING. When any antibiotic is used during the process, if the appropriate calculated amount is used, it will NOT show up in the feed. Though when people at the plants decide to OVERDOSE the fermentors the antibiotic is more likely to show up in the feed.

Richard Laurence Baron said...

Thanks for your note, Anonymous. Your comment is the first about the FDA letter since I created this post 18 months ago.

Information about the letter is available on the Lactrol website. Perhaps you should direct an inquiry to the company. Best wishes...