In 1993 I was in our Backstage Pass program. It was just me, it was only called an internship, and it was a bit different then... mostly driving around art proofs and production items to different places. I liked the industry then but I really fell in love with it when Got Milk? came out.
Got Milk? was the first time that I looked at advertising as strategy. Prior ads which got me excited were Absolut Vodka, Nike and Isuzu. But those all just seemed “cool” to a 19 year old. Got Milk? was clearly an act of advertising re-looking at something and giving people a new way to perceive a product in a story that was amazingly authentic, memorable and meaningful.
2018 is the 25th anniversary of the campaign from Goodby Silverstein.
Some highlights:
-A deprivation strategy of denying people the product for a week and then having the focus groups revealed how important milk was to people.
-“Got Milk?” was originally a moniker on the agenda for a part of the client meeting. It was written by Jeff Goodby almost immediately after research.
-The launch spot, Aaron Burr, was directed by Michael Bay right out of film school. He’s credited with giving the unique look to that spot.
-All of the Got Milk? mustache photos in print were taken by the iconic Annie Leibovitz who wisely saw the potential of the campaign and locked up all rights to shoot each one for however long the campaign lasted.
-The Dir. of Marketing was key to getting the somewhat controversial campaign approach approved and then extended into new areas beyond health that the dairy board was not comfortable going.
-According to the lead creative teams, every ad was wrapped around a central approach: "They have a dark mood that hurls the viewer face-first into stories that don’t explicitly reveal the product being sold until the final seconds."
Saving milk consumption decline is an impossible task because of today’s competitive choice (vs pre-1990), health changes, etc. But imagine how much faster and further it would have fallen without this work?
From John’s Pinboard:
-World Cup time. For you fans out there Adidas has a nice display of the official shoes going back to the 1950s.
-And here are some of the best World Cup posters and illustrations with a bit of story.
-Beautiful example of a well-done landing page. Love all they ways to learn about the product and the data capture insight from the choices. (Leagas Delaney has been the agency for decades.)
-Here’s the best hippie town in each US state.
-Turns out, according to Spotify data, the music we liked when we were 13-15 shapes our musical tastes as adults. Which explains the Guns N’ Roses thing...
-Forsman and Bodenfors has done epic work for Volvo. Here is their latest collection of :10 ads celebrating whatever “family” means to you.
-Check our how our friends at CBH redesigned a local non profit. Awesome work.
-Cannes has begun. I enjoy following the nightly releases of winners as it goes, by category, all week. Makes it easy to digest and appreciate. It’s the highest creative award to be won. There are also some great presentations. WARC does a nice job keeping up on it so follow there or directly on the Cannes site.