The iconic Got Milk? ads touted dairy from the Modesto area and beyond. They’re back
A dairy industry group has revived the Got Milk? campaign, a memorable way of advertising one of Stanislaus County’s top products.
The new push uses social media and television to urge young consumers to make milk part of their diets.
A YouTube video, for example, shows how to enjoy the product in especially messy ways, such as a kiddie pool filled with milk and cereal.
The original campaign debuted in 1993 and is regarded as one of the best in advertising history. In each spot, the Got Milk? tagline followed a mini-drama in which someone really, really needed the drink.
Most famous is the first ad, about a radio quiz contestant asked to name the killer of Alexander Hamilton in an 1804 duel. His mouth is full of peanut butter, so he cannot answer “Aaron Burr.” More recently, Leslie Odom Jr., who played Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway smash “Hamilton” did his own remake of that ad.
Got Milk? began in California
The California Milk Processor Board created the original campaign to slow a decline in fluid milk sales. This is the stuff in cartons and jugs, not the much larger volume made into cheese, yogurt, ice cream and other products.
The revival is by a national group called the Milk Processor Education Program, or Milk PEP, based in Washington, D.C.
“The re-imagination of this iconic campaign embraces an iconic line as a fresh start for our industry,” CEO Yin Woon Rani said in a news release.
The reboot comes at a time when fluid milk consumption has actually increased, thanks to people stuck at home because of COVID-19.
From January through July 18, U.S. retail sales were up 8.3% to $6.4 billion, according to Nielsen data cited by the Associated Press. The same period last year saw a 2.3%. decline.
The spike has helped dairy farmers boost profit margins that often are tight.
Help for a key local industry
Milk brought an estimated $636 million in gross income to Stanislaus dairy farmers in 2018, the county agricultural commissioner said in the most recent annual report.
Milk was a distant second to the $1.1 billion that almond growers grossed here. But the dairy industry is much more labor-intensive, employing thousands of people in farming, processing, trucking and related ventures.
Merced and San Joaquin counties are key players, too, in a California dairy sector that is first among states.
Famous athletes do their part
The Got Milk? revamp features a few well-known athletes. In a TikTok spot, Olympic medalist Katie Ledecky swims the length of a pool with a glass of chocolate milk balanced on her head.
In the YouTube video, NFL wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster tosses a cookie into a kitchen blender filled with milk. It also features an unnamed pair of preschoolers who stick straws in their cereal bowls and make milk bubbles.
Milk PEP hopes the campaign reinforces the idea that the product is nutritional, as well as comforting in an uneasy time.
“It’s been a really exceptional year,” Rani told the AP. “We’re very focused on, ‘How do we sustain that demand?’ ”
She declined to say how much MilkPEP is spending on the campaign. It likely will run through 2020.
This story was originally published August 5, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "The iconic Got Milk? ads touted dairy from the Modesto area and beyond. They’re back."
