Got Milk?


Got Milk? is an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of milk, which was created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993, and was later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. It launched in 1993 with the now-famous "Aaron Burr" television commercial, directed by Michael Bay. The national campaign, run by MilkPEP added the "got milk?" logo to its "Milk Mustache" ads beginning in 1995. In January 2014, MilkPEP discontinued its Milk Mustache and got milk? advertisements, and launched a new campaign with the tagline "Milk Life". The "got milk?" campaign continues in California and the "got milk?" trademark is being licensed to food and merchandise companies for U.S. and international sales. The campaign has been credited with greatly increasing milk sales in California, although not necessarily nationwide.

History

The phrase was created by the American advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners. In an interview in Art & Copy, a 2009 documentary that focused on the origins of famous advertising slogans, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein said that the phrase almost didn't turn into an advertising campaign. According to the New York Times, people at Goodby, Silverstein "thought it was lazy, not to mention grammatically incorrect".
The advertisements would typically feature people in various situations involving dry or sticky foods and treats such as cakes and cookies. The person then would find himself in an uncomfortable situation due to a full mouth and no milk to wash it down, including a commercial of a cruel businessman getting hit by a truck seconds after insulting someone over the phone and seemingly going to Heaven, only to find out it is actually Hell where he finds a huge plate of cookies and an endless supply of completely empty milk cartons, as well as a commercial of an airplane pilot intentionally putting his plane into a dangerously steep nosedive in order to obtain a bottle of milk from a stewardess's cart out of his reach, only for the cart to crash into a man who gets out of the bathroom right in front of the cart. At the end of the commercial, the character would look directly to the camera sadly and then boldly displayed would be the words "Got Milk?"
The first Got Milk? advertisement aired nationwide on October 29, 1993, which featured a hapless historian receiving a call to answer a radio station's $10,000 trivia question, "Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel?". The man is shown to have an entire museum solely for the duel itself, packed with all the artifacts. He answers the question correctly by saying "Aaron Burr", but because his mouth is full of peanut butter sandwich and he doesn't have milk to wash it down, his answer is unintelligible. The DJ promptly hangs up on him. The ad, directed by future Hollywood filmmaker Michael Bay, was at the top of the advertising industry's award circuit in 1994. In 2002, the ad was named one of the ten best commercials of all time by a USA Today poll, and was run again nationwide that same year. It has since been featured in books on advertising and used in case studies.
The slogan "Got Milk?" was licensed to the National Milk Processor Education Program in 1995 to use on their celebrity print ads, which, since then, have included celebrities from the fields of sports, media and entertainment, like Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Serena Williams and Venus Williams, as well as fictional characters from TV, video games and films such as The Simpsons, Batman, Mario and The Powerpuff Girls posing in print advertisements sporting a "milk mustache" and employing the slogan, "Where's your mustache?" The milk mustache campaign was created by art director Bernie Hogya and copywriter Jennifer Gold. The milk mustache campaign promoting the Super Bowl has also been featured in USA Today, the Friday edition featured one player from each Super Bowl team to the player from the winning team in Monday's edition. It was not featured in 2014 as the advertising focus that year was on the "Protein Fight Club" campaign which promoted the importance of eating breakfast with milk and the "Refuel: Got Chocolate Milk" campaign.
Former California Governor Gray Davis expressed his dislike for one commercial and asked if there was a way to remove it from the air. It featured two children who refuse to drink milk, because they believe milk is for babies. They tell their mother that their elderly next-door neighbor, Mr. Miller, never drinks milk. They see him going to use his wheelbarrow when suddenly his arms rip off because, having not consumed milk, his bones are weak and fragile. The children scream in horror and then frighteningly start imbibing every last drop of milk they have.
From 1994 to 2005, ads appeared in California directed at Hispanic consumers, using the tagline "Familia, Amor y Leche", created by Anita Santiago Advertising. In 2005, the Spanish language campaign was awarded to ad agency Grupo Gallegos, who changed the tagline to “toma leche” or “drink milk”.
According to the Got Milk? website, the campaign has over 90% awareness in the United States and the tagline has been licensed to dairy boards across the nation since 1995. Got Milk? is a powerful property and has been licensed on a range of consumer goods, including Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels, baby and teen apparel, and kitchenware. The trademarked line has been widely parodied by groups championing a variety of causes. Many of these parodies use a lookalike rather than the actual persons used in the original Got Milk? advertisements. In 2005, the California Milk Processor Board created a "Got Ripped Off?" poster showcasing their top 100 favorite parodies of the slogan.
The voice saying "Got Milk?" in most of the nationwide television commercials is that of veteran American voiceover actor Denny Delk. Other narrators have occasionally been used.
Some Got Milk? ads varied the slogan to say, "Got Chocolate Milk?"
In February 2014, MilkPEP announced that it would discontinue licensing the slogan for its advertising in favor of a new tagline named "Milk Life". Despite this, the California Milk Processor Board continue to use it. As of 2016, the brand is used for a line of snack foods called Got Milk Snacks.
As part of their ownership of the "Got Milk" trademark, they have been targeting artists on Etsy, demanding that they receive the art to destroy.

Related advertising

Beginning in 2011, an advertising campaign was launched primarily attacking the soy milk industry. The themes of these ads are comparable to the Got Milk? ads, but with such messages as "real milk isn't made from beans and nuts" and "real milk requires no shaking".

Parodies and references

The slogan is a snowclone, having appeared in numerous alternative versions on T-shirts and other advertisements. By 2007, the slogan had become an international icon, and the phrase has been parodied more than any other ad slogan.