Branding the Herd:
The History of the
Dairyland Cows

In 2013, Dairyland Electrical Industries was rebranding itself. While doing market research and evaluating our place in the industry, we learned that we were simply known within the industry as “Dairyland” and our varying decouplers were not necessarily called by their names but bore the Dairyland moniker too (like how all lip balm products are referred to as Chapstick, regardless of which company made it).

With this knowledge in mind, Dairyland’s marketing team updated their visual identity, replacing their “DEI” mark with the “D” logo and Dairyland design that we still use to this day. We wanted to communicate our new identity and emphasize our company’s beginnings, where we started by solving stray voltage on dairy farms.

While looking around for promotional items to hand out at industry events and conferences, Marketing Manager Greg McManis happened to come across a four-legged squishy cow (OG Cow) and decided it would be a great piece of swag to bear the new Dairyland logo. He figured it would be something the company would do for six months at most, and then they would move on to the next thing. The industry, however, had different plans.

We took the newly minted OG Cow to a regional tradeshow where the inventory was very quickly depleted (We’re sure you’ve heard the adage about pigs flying. Well, these cows were flying). We were udderly astounded. Those in the industry could not get enough of our four-legged friend, and we quickly decided that more cows would be needed.

I didn’t expect the cows to become so popular, but people started finding us at events to find out if there were any new cows they could add to their collection. We’ve had a lot of fun over the years seeing pictures of people’s offices and even a few baby nurseries decorated with our cows. We will have some new cows joining the herd soon!
– Greg McManis, Marketing Manager

Fast-forward to 2014. The original cows had been such a hit throughout their debut year and Greg knew he wanted to keep things moo-ving. He then had an idea: give the cows a theme that correlates to where they’ll be given away. The San Antonio NACE conference was quickly approaching that year, and Dairyland had plans to host 100+ friends and colleagues at a Texas rodeo. At the event, those guests were officially introduced to Cowboy Cow. The continued popularity gave rise to other themed cows over the years, such as Hockey, Business, Beach, Golf, Doctor, Soccer, Astronaut, and most recently, Aviator Cow. Most recently we have added each cow to our “About Us” page where they have their own profile and bio for you to learn more about them. What will we come up with next?