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Today’s Lesson: Selling
Teenagers on Benefits of Milk
Stuart Elliott
The New York Times
September 26, 2008
THE sponsors and creators of a popular long-running
campaign are about to get schooled.
Classes at three high schools in California will be
spending the next six or seven weeks developing ideas
for the “Got milk?” campaign, which is sponsored by the
California Milk Processor Board. In a kind of academic
version of “The Apprentice,” the classes will function
as if they were advertising agencies, responsible for
research, strategy, creative concepts, media plans and
account management.
Well, they will function as agencies up to a point:
schmoozing the client at the Polo Lounge or the Top of
the Mark is verboten.
The students are being asked to propose ads that could
be run next year as part of the efforts by the milk
board to help increase consumption among teenagers. They
are scheduled to present their work to executives from
the milk board and the San Francisco agency behind the
“Got milk?” campaign, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners,
part of the Omnicom Group.
The contest, which is getting under way this week, is
emblematic of a major trend on Madison Avenue: inviting
consumers to create the ads that are aimed at persuading
other consumers to buy stuff. The trend is gathering
momentum as marketing — assisted by technology and the
new media — morphs from a top-down lecture into a
two-way conversation.
“It kind of gets us out of having to create the
advertising,” said a jocular Jeff Goodby, co-chairman at
Goodby, Silverstein.
He continued, more seriously: “The idea is that it’s
fine to involve people in the solution of problems. And
people love to see if they can do as good a job as the
professionals.”
Mr. Goodby recalled breakthrough work created decades
ago by a leading copywriter and creative executive in
San Francisco, Howard Gossage, who produced print ads
for Eagle shirts and the Whiskey Distillers of Ireland
that asked consumers to contribute to and take part in
the process. Mr. Gossage believed such involvement
stimulated emotional connections between products and
their intended buyers.
“It’s not a brand-new thing,” Mr. Goodby said of the
trend. “The Internet and interactivity have brought it
back.”
In this instance, the students at the three schools can
suggest interactive campaigns or whatever they determine
is needed to stimulate milk consumption among their
peers.
One benchmark they can use is a current campaign with
that purpose from Goodby, Silverstein. The ads feature a
make-believe rock band, White Gold and the Calcium
Twins, which appears in television commercials, on a Web
site (whitegoldiswhitegold.com) and on social networks
like MySpace (myspace.com/whitegoldiswhitegold).
“We are for the first time with White Gold trying to
speak directly to teenagers,” said Steve James,
executive director at the milk board in San Clemente,
Calif.
The inspiration for that campaign, and the contest, is
the fact that as teenagers “leave the sphere of
influence of the home, and the jug of milk on the
kitchen table, what happens to consumption is not a
pretty sight,” he added. The reference was to how they
eschew milk for soft drinks, energy drinks and other
nondairy beverages.
“It would be good for us, and good for them, to get some
‘native intelligence,’ ” Mr. James said, “to help us
resonate ever truer with our teen audience.”
“They are a mysterious demographic,” he added, “and we
want to reach them with an authentic voice in an
authentic way.”
The three schools participating in the contest are from
Northern, Central and Southern California. They are,
respectively, Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton,
the Center for Advanced Research and Technology near
Fresno and Orange High School in Orange.
The schools were chosen with the assistance of Junior
Achievement of Northern California, a chapter of the
nonprofit organization Junior Achievement USA that
interests students in grades kindergarten through 12 in
business and becoming financially literate.
“This is the first time we’ve been in this type of
project,” said Linda McCracken, president of the
chapter, “giving the students an opportunity to see what
it would be like if they were really working at an
advertising agency and what it takes to get people to
buy a product.”
The schools were selected on criteria, she added, that
included their courses on advertising and marketing.
Joan Thomas, who teaches the business courses to juniors
and seniors at Amador Valley High, said she “jumped on”
the invitation to participate.
“A lot of our students apply to U.C.L.A., but a lot
apply to junior college and don’t know what they want to
do,” Ms. Thomas said, adding: “A project like this is
something that opens their eyes to the possibilities.
And it gets them excited about going to college and the
career opportunities that are out there for them.”
The learning has already started, Ms. Thomas said,
describing how her students were surprised to find that
the executives they met this week are in the business
world but “had no business degrees.”
After the three classes make their presentations, which
are scheduled in San Francisco for mid-November, the
executives will choose one concept as the winner. Those
students will win a prize worth $2,000, what the milk
board calls “statewide bragging rights,” and perhaps
their ideas will be part of milk ads aimed at teenagers
in 2009.
The contest marks the 15th anniversary of the first “Got
milk?” commercial for the milk board, which offered a
humorous look at a history buff whose specialty was the
life of Aaron Burr. The campaign made waves because it
diverged drastically from traditional marketing: Rather
than proclaim how wonderful the product is, the ads
demonstrate how frustrating and unappetizing it is to be
deprived of milk.
The “Got milk?” slogan was subsequently licensed by the
milk board to the national milk marketers, whose ads
feature celebrity endorsers sporting milk mustaches.
(The agency for the national milk ads is Lowe Worldwide
in New York, part of the Interpublic Group of
Companies.)
The slogan is also being licensed, Mr. James said, to
milk and dairy organizations in Australia, Britain,
Canada and New Zealand.
It is not true that the Canadian version is “Got milk,
eh?”
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