Cravendale is launching a two-pronged attack on flagging milk sales with a new Cats with Thumbs TV ad and a major on-pack giveaway.

The latest ad follows Cats with Thumbs’ debut in February 2011, which resulted in a 3% rise in volume sales and 5.9 million views on YouTube.

Airing next Saturday (8 September) during ITV’s The X Factor, the 40-second commercial will see the cats kidnap a milkman to get to his milk.

It was produced by Tesco’s new ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy, of which Arla is a long-term client.

The ad will tie in with a major on-pack promotion, where shoppers can collect vouchers to redeem against packs of ‘EPIC straws’ (EPIC stands for Extreme Pilfering Instrument for Cravendale) to make structures through which to drink milk.

Cravendale hopes its new campaign and offer will result in an extra three million litres in milk sales, worth £2.1m, by the year-end. “Sales are pretty flat, so 5% growth year-on-year is a challenging target,” said brand manager Sophie Macauley. Cravendale will spend £2m on the campaign this year and £5m next year.