When I was still doing stand-up, one of my compadres had a regular bit where her punchline was “women: we make milk. We make eggs. We’re a dairy!”
I’m a big fan of the dairy. No, not the human variety, the kind you find in grocery & gourmet stores. So imagine my surprise when I saw the latest ad campaign from the US Milk Board. The Milk Peeps have been riding on “got milk?” for almost 20 years.
It seems that they saw a niche messaging opportunity, and ran with it. Did they run over a cliff? You be the judge.
I’m a big fan of the funny, as you know. However, when you deploy the funny in service of a brand message, you’ve got to make sure that everyone in your intended audience is on board. Women howled in protest from sea to shining sea when the campaign was launched about 4 weeks ago.
As someone who knows PMS only too well – totally an insider, trust me – I would have advised the Milk Peeps to make a woman the face of the campaign. She could warn her boyfriend/husband/boss/random strangers that their lives might be at stake unless dairy products were brought forth right-damn-now.
And it wouldn’t hurt to add some commentary on the potential risks of drinking milk that has rBGH (a/k/a bovine somatotropin, or bovine growth hormone) in it: like the pus from mastitis – udder infection – that cows who get pumped full of the stuff wind up suffering from. Who needs that, right?
The campaign has certainly kicked off some buzz. I don’t think it’s exactly the buzz that the Milk Peeps were looking for, but buzz is, after all, buzz. Just ask Rupert “help-I’m-strapped-to-a-buzz-saw” Murdoch.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it …
