Birthday Card from Dutch Lady

Yesterday, Mommy received a card-like thingy in an attractive blue colour Dutch Lady envelope. It turns out that Dutch Lady sent a Happy-1-year-old birthday card to Juan Or. By the way, Juan Or's first birthday will be on 12th May (coming soon!).

(Front cover of the birthday card)

Upon opening the birthday card, Mommy saw two major sections. On the right side is a birthday greeting to the child that goes:

Someone's turning one - what a celebration,

Cake, balloons and lovely decorations.

Clapping, singing, laughing, having fun,

Have a Hapy, Happy Birthday, Little One.

On the left side is a message to "Dear dedicated mom". In the message, Dutch Lady 'reminded' Mommy to include Dutch Lady 123 Growing Up Milk to Juan Or's daily diet, and that the milk contains a special formula (Dutch Lady's trademark TT-Ratio formula).

(How the birthday card looks from the inside)

Actually, way before Dutch Lady sent these marketing items to Mommy (Dutch Lady even sent a sachet of the 123 Growing Up Milk honey flavour sometime before this birthday card), Mommy had already stocked up this brand of milk powder for Juan Or. Currently, Mommy has 4 packs of 1.1 kg of this milk powder in stock. The 1st pack was purchased from Central Supermarket (Old Klang Road) for RM21.49 (for plain and honey flavours only) to which Mommy thought that was cheap enough. Much, much later on, Tesco held a 3-day weekend promotion selling it (all flavours including Chocolate) for RM18.45 per pack of 1.1kg! So Mommy bought 3 packs.

Upon Mommy's reflection of the contents of the Dutch Lady birthday card, Mommy realizes that Dutch Lady's marketing strategy aims to target at mothers who have yet to feed their babies with toddler formula milk. The rationale is that it is easier to influence someone who has never used a generic item before to start using their brand, compared to getting parents who have already been using a generic item to want to change brand. After all, the general trend by parents is that they will only start buying toddler milk powder when the child is very near 1 year old and that once a certain milk powder brand suits the child, the parent will stick to that brand no matter what. That also explains why Dutch Lady sent the birthday card to Juan Or something like 2-and-a-half weeks in advance of Juan Or's actual birthdate. Most probably, Dutch Lady hopes to capture Mommy's purchasing choice before Mommy sets out to buy toddler milk powder for Juan Or. Pretty smart and aggressive marketing by Dutch Lady, huh?

Anyway, regardless of whatever marketing strategies by whatever milk companies, Mommy has always personally liked Dutch Lady milk products. An example is the Dutch Lady Full Cream milk powder that Mommy consumes on a daily basis. What Mommy likes about Dutch Lady is that, let's say you use lukewarm water, the milk powder is so much more easily dissolved compared to Fernleaf's (Mommy used to drink Fernleaf during the unmarried days back then!). Taste-wise too, Mommy prefers Dutch Lady to Fernleaf. And because of that, Mommy believes that Dutch Lady's infant formula milk powder will taste better too compared to other brands. Probably this holds true because the babysitter says that Juan Or is already able to willingly drink 7 oz. of infant formula at one go, unlike last time when he drank Lactogen (Nestle) and Similac (Abbott Laboratories) whereby he had to be 'forced' to drink.

So there you go, probably other mommies out there who have submitted their details to Dutch Lady previously have received the same thing as Mommy.