"Got Milk?" An Ad Campaign That's Almost as Old as Me!

It's hard to remember an ad or campaign that's been around so long that almost anyone can remember it. I can only recall the ad campaign, "Got Milk?", from the California Milk Processing Board or CMPB. Can you believe that it was started in 1993, making it 27 years old? I'm only 2 months older than this campaign and that just makes me speechless. What a way to date yourself. Would that make me old milk? All I can recall about this campaign is the question and the famous milk mustache that went alongside it, I remember being young and trying to get a milk-stache out of milkshakes because that made it the thickest milk-stache of them all!

"Got Milk?" is one of the most iconic advertisements that I can pin point. So, I decided to stick my nose into any information revolving around this campaign to basically educate myself more. Like what was the purpose of the campaign and what made it stick around for so long? Well, it turns out that milk consumption was dropping around the 90's. So, to support farmers that supplied milk for the California Milk Processor Board (a nonprofit marketing board funded by California dairy processors), they decided to make a marketing campaign to help boost sales for dairy farmers. CMPB competition during that time could have been any fruit drinks —like perhaps capri sun, Gatorade — or any other drinks that caused a change in the market with having so many more beverage options.

So, besides the fact that this campaign is like every other campaign that wanted to boost sales, I found out that they made their own website just for this campaign: gotmilk.com! It's impressive that the California Milk Processing Board went that far. But, maybe not that surprising, considering that the advertisements brought in a lot of funding — seeing as how it's lasted 27 years. I found recent claims that there is two parts of the "Got Milk" campaign. One is the typography/phrase, and the other is the milk mustache. Apparently, the milk mustache was not apart of the original "Got Milk" campaign, but was created by Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP) around 1995. Was it  these two elements combined why the campaign stuck around for so long and continues to be here today?

The simplicity of down-to-earth question that any common person would ask when they need milk is the key as to why this campaign was so effective, in my opinion. Almost all of the advertisements have big, celebrated names throughout the "Got Milk" timeline. Even the Google search image above shows how popular the "Got Milk" campaign is. So popular, in fact,  that others tried to recreate their own version of that sweet-yet-simple tagline and sporting of that famous milk-stache. I believe the support of bigger names has been another factor that might have kept this going for such a long time. The ads are effective enough to have my family almost religiously drink milk. And this is with or without food that really needs milk to wash it down!