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The challenge for Arla's Anchor butter is clear: it may be a brand classic, but with the butter and spreads market in decline at an annual rate of 1.3 per cent and an ageing consumer base, it has its work cut out to maintain and increase market share.

The butter brand is not exactly in trouble - Arla puts its value at £74.7 million - but the powers that be care enough to sign off a £4 million fighting fund for Anchor's biggest ever promotion.

It centres around a 17 million-pack free prize draw offering the winner a house in the sun worth £250,000, with 200,000 second- and third-tier prizes and premiums also up for grabs. The marketing juggernaut backing the push is impressive too, taking in experiential, DM, online, TV, print ads, a newspaper partnership, bespoke in-store work and trade support.

"I want Anchor to become mums' number one loved and trusted brand again," says Anchor's brand manager Caroline Baker. "Anchor has fantastic brand equity and the fact that it has been around for more than 100 years means it has a great history. This campaign is about bringing Anchor up to date and making it more relevant for today's market. It's a massive brand already, but there are huge possibilities to grow."

The main mechanics are simple: 17 million packs of Anchor's block butter, Spreadable and Lighter Spreadable variants will drive consumers online to a support website for the free prize draw, which runs until mid-October.

The emphasis of the drive is on the "sunshine hours" that go into cows making Anchor. Second-string daily prizes include 4,150 Anchor-branded "sunshine umbrellas" and 16,600 £50 Thomson holiday vouchers given away between 24 July and 14 October.

Each pack also carries sunshine hours tokens, which consumers can collect and redeem against Anchor-branded merchandise for an additional cost.

This merchandise includes a further 4,000 umbrellas, 125,000 butter dishes, 10,000 Frisbees and 10,000 cool bags.

"This secondary layer loyalty element allows us to give our loyal consumers the chance to receive branded merchandise, while the instant win targets less regular and new consumers," says Rachel Deacon, client partner at Carlson Marketing, the agency behind the push.

As to the headline prize, Baker defends her choice of a holiday home, rather than increasing perceived winnability by offering, say, more one-off holidays. "We considered offering one family holiday every year for 10 years, which had the longevity and wow factor we were looking for, but the home in the sun gives something much bigger that a family can appreciate for life," she states.

The promotional website is designed to become an online forum for mums looking to keep their kids entertained during the summer holidays. The site carries its own suggestions and also encourages browsers to upload details of summer events to share with other parents. "It's a key time for mums during the summer holidays because they are looking for things to do with the kids to keep them entertained," says Baker. "The promotion also runs right through until October so we are still going to get coverage when the kids are back at school."

Baker says her target market is mums in the 25-40 bracket, but admits: "Our typical consumer is currently 45-plus and sales in this category are mainly due to habitual purchase."

While Anchor's spreadable variants have a younger demographic and use only 100 per cent natural ingredients, Baker still has a tough battle against the dairy spreads sector - the likes of Clover and Utterly Butterly that transformed the category in the 1990s. "They have stolen a huge part of the market because they are cheaper. With our spreadable products we are trying to gain back those consumers."

Support for the push launches with a four-page sponsored competition in The Sun, which goes out on 17 July and will include a celebrity endorsement and free prize draw to win a Thompson holiday. There's also a free code to drive consumers online to take part in the main push, and the first 3,000 people to go online and use The Sun code will also be sent a branded Frisbee.

The experiential work involves a nationwide sampling campaign at 67 of the top five supermarkets from 17 July to 19 December, which will involve handing out samples and bread buttered with Anchor Spreadable, balloons for the kids and free codes to go online and win the house. Special events are being planned for one of the top stores for each supermarket chain, where a local celebrity will be present and activities including a balloon release will be featured. The experiential roadshow will also visit Somerfield and Asda's head office car parks to launch the promotion in a bid to get all staff on side.

In-store collateral is being tailored for each supermarket: Tesco will include floor graphics, posters and a separate competition and banner ad on Tesco.com leading to a campaign micro-site with free codes driving people back to the main Anchor site. Sainsbury's is carrying trolley advertising, ads in its in-store magazine and a direct mail push through Bd-Ntwk. This mailing will be sent to 200,000 Sainsbury's shoppers with money-off coupons and a flyer carrying details of the main competition and a free code for recipients to go online and enter. And Asda is offering one of three Thompson sunshine holidays worth £3,000 each with £1,000 spending money via a prize draw, through the Asda Magazine, asda.com and leaflets handed out by Asda greeters in 300 stores.

Baker also appreciates how much rests on how store staff communicate the campaign. With this in mind, field sales teams visited 1,500 of the top retailers ahead of the promotion's launch to sell the campaign in and provide information packs. The final part of the support for the drive is a TV ad featuring Anchor's Cow and Moo characters, which will roll out for four weeks from 31 July. Through Clemmow Hornby Inge, the spot will be seen by an estimated 70 per cent of the campaign's target audience.

As well as being Baker's first salvo as she takes the fight to her rivals, this campaign will form the basis of Anchor's ongoing marketing strategy.

"This is our biggest ever promotion by a very long way. We will, of course, evaluate how it works as a whole, but also examine how each individual element works in targeting our market. This is why it's so important to use individual codes to enter because they allow us to track all the activity," says Baker. "It will help determine what elements we repeat next year."

Effective medium

The promotion isn't just a test of her brand then, but also of the effectiveness of the differing sales promotion techniques that have been lined up. Whatever the mechanics, for Baker promotional marketing is definitely the way forward. "We have seen how other categories within the grocery sector have used integrated campaigns.

This push has a strong promotion while also demonstrating core brand values and allowing us to see the effectiveness of each medium. It is so much more interactive than a one-way communication such as TV would be."

When all is said and done, in a sector so obviously at risk from the drive towards healthy living, it's uncertain just how much can be done to stem the flow of consumers away from butter. Whether enough has been done here to extol the virtues of Anchor's all-natural ingredients claim versus its rivals less pure offer is another moot point. However, as a first move in the fight for market share, it's clear Anchor is serious about reclaiming the ground it has lost.

IN MY VIEW - 6 out of 10

On the face of it, this is a good promotion. It is a fully integrated campaign, has a strong trade element, covers initial acquisition and depth of trial and has a sound evaluation strategy. The use of online is also positive - particularly if the consumer can be encouraged to interact and share summer events with each other, as suggested. I am sure data will be captured and re-used to build stronger bonds going forward.

Having said that, a couple of elements don't quite compute for me. First, the prize fund: there is a massive gap between the main prize and the consolation prizes. I think that the promotion will be hugely reliant on really strong creative in order to engage consumers, because the chance of winning the top prize (around 17 million:1) won't, in my opinion, be particularly attractive.

In addition, and while I genuinely applaud the integrated nature of the campaign, I question the use of TV. As an announcement of the promotion, I would rather see a more creative use of media - outdoors seems obvious.

The campaign feels a little bit like it was created in reverse - the media structure set down and then the creative idea laid on top. The idea itself doesn't feel very integrated into the media plan. If the big shout is about winning a holiday home then build the media around this through the likes of travel supplements. If the central idea is what to do during the holidays, then target areas such as local newspaper "what's on" sections and sports centres - maybe not as core media, but certainly as support.

Ultimately, it feels like one of the most interesting bits - the summer community angle - has been relegated to being an "also ran". This is likely to be the thing on mums' minds this summer and could be hugely ownable for Anchor.

Our industry doesn't get too many £4 million budgets, and when they come along I want to see them work hard. This campaign is, I think, structured well and I am sure it will be executed well, but could be so much more compelling. My overriding concern is that of the attractiveness of the prize fund. I hope the creative is strong because without it I would worry about its ability to pay for itself.

Phil Harvey, chairman, Jeffries Parsons Mayers Harvey.