California’s Dairy Industry Takes Old Question to New Extreme

FOR years, the question “Got milk?” was actually asking consumers “Got enough milk?” — reminding them to drink milk by comically exaggerating the perils of running out. Now the “Got milk?” campaign is taking the opposite tack, by comically exaggerating the perils of never running out.

The twist on the campaign, which began appearing this week, is from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, the Omnicom Group agency that created “Got milk?” in 1993 for the California Milk Processor Board. The slogan is familiar beyond that state because it is licensed by the California milk board for nationwide milk campaigns that feature people sporting milk mustaches and are sponsored by national milk processors and dairy farmers.

The California “Got milk?” campaign was noticed from the first commercial by Goodby, Silverstein, about an Aaron Burr expert whose lack of milk thwarted him from winning a quiz jackpot when he was asked who shot Alexander Hamilton. Rather than proclaiming the goodness of milk — as had been the case for decades in local and national milk ads — the campaign sought to demonstrate, in humorous ways, how difficult and dull life would be without it.

The new approach from the California milk board is centered on the goodness of milk, promoting its ability to strengthen hair, teeth and muscles. But rather than reciting a dry list of functional benefits, the campaign celebrates the comic complications of living someplace where one’s milk cup always runneth over — a “milky magical land” known as Mootopia.

On a Web site (VisitMootopia.com) and in television commercials, female inhabitants of Mootopia, using straws to drink from a lake of milk, learn how problematic having beautiful, shiny hair can be. The men are all so strong from drinking milk that arm-wrestling contests settle no arguments.

And the dentist in Mootopia realizes he chose the wrong profession because he cannot even give away free cleanings to people with what he calls “perfect teeth.”

Running ads about the effects of deprivation “was a strategy that worked well for us lo those many years,” said Steve James, executive director of the milk board in San Clemente, Calif.

But some recent, short-term initiatives that played up the functional benefits of milk — like a campaign spoofing the steroids scandal in baseball, proclaiming milk was a “performance-enhancing substance” — were well received, he added.

That led to consideration for a shift in the direction of the campaign, Mr. James said, to portraying milk as a “superdrink,” superior to sports drinks, sodas or energy drinks, “without getting all clinical.”

The change was fine with Goodby, Silverstein.

“We got every last person who drank milk because they were eating a brownie,” said Jeff Goodby, co-chairman and creative director of the agency, referring to the many “Got milk?” ads that reminded consumers how well milk goes with foods like cookies, peanut butter and jelly or cereal.

Initial attempts to produce ads about “the basic benefits” of drinking milk “sounded like a laundry list,” Mr. Goodby said, until the agency came up with the concept of Mootopia.

“It’s interesting to look at problems of surplus” after years of portraying the problems of deprivation, he added. It also “allows us to show a lot of milk,” Mr. Goodby said, laughing. “There’s milk everywhere.”

The commercials and Web site will be followed by a game on Facebook that Mr. Goodby and Mr. James said would feature avatars based on Mootopian citizens.

There are also plans to expand the campaign into other realms, Mr. James said, to appeal to markets like high school students. Ads that ran in California the last couple of years, aimed at stimulating demand for milk among children and teenagers, were centered on a fictional rock star named White Gold.

The milk board spends about $20 million a year on ads, which by state law are limited to California, Mr. James said. (Ads for other California dairy products like cheese, sponsored by another marketing organization, appear nationally.)

A campaign from the milk board intended for Californians who speak Spanish has been devoted for some time to the functional benefits of milk. New ads in that campaign, by Grupo Gallegos in Long Beach, Calif., came out last month; they use the slogan “Mucho más que leche” (“More than just milk”) under the umbrella theme “Toma leche” (“Drink milk”).

The national milk ads that use the milk mustache as a mnemonic device are created by Deutsch in New York, part of the Lowe & Partners Worldwide division of the Interpublic Group of Companies. The print ads in that campaign are currently running the “Got milk?” slogan in an upper corner and using “Body by milk” as their main theme.