“Got Milk?” is a question you’ll be hearing less often.
The famous ad campaign for which celebrities donned milk moustaches in support of drinking dairy is being retired.
After two decades, the Milk Processor Education Program — the national marketing arm for the dairy industry — is switching its tactics.
The new campaign, “Milk Life,” launched Feb. 24, eschews the celebs for images of ordinary people doing everyday activities.
It also touts milk as a good source of protein, with 8 grams per serving.
Erasing “Got Milk” from the collective consciousness isn’t likely to happen overnight, though.
The slogan was first dreamed up in 1993 for the California Milk Processor Board by the ad agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. The first ads featured a man with a mouthful of peanut butter trying to answer the question “Who shot Alexander Hamilton?” on a radio call-in show. No one understood his cries of “Aaron Burr!” because he didn’t have a glass of milk to de-stick his palate.
MilkPEP then licensed the phrase in 1995 and launched the celebrity posters, for which an array of stars and athletes — from the Olsen twins to Reggie Bush — shared why they drank milk. About 300 different celebrity ads were generated.
The ads were meant to bring excitement to a “boring” product, ad executives told Time magazine.
“Milk is not a very high-interest item in people’s lives. It’s a staple,” Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein and Partners told the mag. “We discovered there was a certain kind of irreplaceability to milk that I think is what made the campaign work.”
Despite the campaign’s ubiquity in the ’90s and ’00s, milk consumption in the U.S. has continued to fall.
Americans born in the 1990s are less likely to drink fluid milk with lunch and dinner than their counterparts born in the 1970s, a government report announced last year.
Between 1977-78 and 2007-08, the number of children who did not drink milk on a given day rose from 12% to 24%. Thirty years ago, 21% of adults reported drinking milk at dinner time; in 2008 it had fallen to 9%.
That drop-off is “unfortunately not surprising,” said New York-based nutritionist Keri Gans, adding that sugary beverages like soda and sports drinks have edged out milk at the dinner table for many families.
Additionally, “a lot of people are concerned about hormones and antibiotics in milk,” Gans said. “If you want to choose to drink organic, drink organic, but it doesn’t mean not to drink milk.”
While the national industry won’t be milking the slogan any longer, “Got Milk” won’t go away entirely. It will still be used in ads by the state Milk Processor board in California.
