Teenage girls are being asked to review their daily beauty regime as the Milk Development Council (MDC) launches a two year £3 million marketing campaign to dispel common myths surrounding dairy products.

Launched this week with the support of the European Commission, the initiative centres on the consumption of milk, yogurt and cheese and targets 11-16 year old girls. It encourages them to increase their dairy intake, and hence calcium, in a bid to halt the rising numbers of women being diagnosed with osteoporosis in later life.

The campaign follows MDC-commissioned research which indicated that only one in four girls is eating three dairy products each day, as recommended by The Dairy Council in its '3-a-day' campaign.

Dubbed 'Naturally Beautiful', the campaign will aim to bolster the amount of calcium teenage girls consume by focusing on the many beautifying nutrients that can be found in milk, cheese and yogurt, in particular those that can benefit hair and skin.

Vicky Hathaway marketing manager at MDC says: "There are 2.25m girls aged 11-16 in Great Britain. If every one of them drank just one extra glass of milk a day, that's 164 million extra litres of milk a year. We're aiming to make eating dairy a healthy habit, so that it's not just over the next two years we'll see increases in consumption amongst these girls, but for the rest of their lives. And as the mothers of the future, they will be instrumental in encouraging future generations to eat a healthy amount of a variety of dairy products."

A range of media will be used in the marketing campaign to make sure that girls see or hear the 'Naturally Beautiful' message in lots of different ways. All the media chosen (including cinema, radio and press advertising) has been carefully selected for its cost-effectiveness and relevance to the target audience. Each product (milk, cheese and yogurt) has its own advert, and the ads are clearly a 'family', the fourth member of this being an advertisement targeted at mums highlighting the invisible threat of calcium deficiency.

This campaign is the latest in a long line of marketing initiatives generated or supported by MDC over the past two years. In that time, some £5.5 million has been invested in industry match-funded projects such as school milk in primary and secondary schools, territorial cheese, and the development of dairy beverages and dairy snacking products.

Possibly the most high profile campaign has been 'The White Stuff Milk Moustache' promotion featuring Nell McAndrew, pop bands Blue and Mis-Teeq and, most recently, Mr Bean and the characters from the new Magic Roundabout movie.