Whatever Happened To The Celebrity Milk Mustache Ads?

Let's play a word-association game. What comes to mind when you hear the following words: standout, exceptional, or difficult-to-acquire? Perhaps you thought of something like a new iPhone. We're gonna go out on a limb and guess that milk wasn't your answer. If that's the case, then you understand what the powers that be in the milk industry faced in the 1990s. They needed to figure out how to stop the free fall in milk sales that had been ongoing for decades. How could they do that with a product that, for the most part, people didn't think about at all unless they ran out of it? Milk is, at best, an afterthought for most people.

As it turns out, it was this quality that led to a series of ads with milk-mustached celebs who were part of the 2.0 version of the famous "Got Milk" ad campaign. At its peak, celebrities everywhere practically begged, borrowed, or stole their way into these ads, and the roster of celebs who bore the famous white 'stache ranged from movie and TV stars, like The Rock, to Olympic athletes, like Apolo Ohno. You pretty much couldn't go anywhere for 20 years or so without seeing the white-lipped portrait of the day's "it" guy or girl. But if the milk-mustached celebs were so memorable, why don't we see those ads anymore? If you've ever wondered, then pour yourself a glass of milk and read on.

Unlike the age-old question of "Which came first, the chicken or the egg," we know which came first in the "Got Milk?" campaign — it was the "Got Milk" slogan. In 1993, the California Milk Processor Board merged heads — creatively speaking — with the advertising company Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, to create what would eventually become one of the most famous ad campaigns in history.

The ad's purpose was simple. Turn an ordinary, kinda bland product into something that people not only raved about but practically tripped over one another in the grocery stores to buy. This was easier said than done. It isn't an exaggeration to say that even the ad execs couldn't see how they would make the "most boring project imaginable" (per Time) into the sizzle that sells the steak. Some trial and error and a few realizations, (namely, that people didn't think about milk until they were out of it) ultimately sparked the phrase "Got Milk?"

That innocent two-word question inspired a 20-year odyssey that spawned hundreds of ads. Since the campaign started in California, it's unsurprising that 70 of the ads appeared in Cali alone. About 350 of them featured the famous mustache, exploding on TV and in print ads locally and nationally. Aside from winning numerous awards, the campaign won countless eyeballs. Four-fifths of Americans saw the ads during all the years they ran (via Fast Company).

Britney Spears. David Beckham. Sarah Michelle Gellar. All superstars, and more importantly for the purposes of the ads, all milk drinkers. It didn't matter how A-List someone was. If he or she wasn't a milk drinker, an appearance in the "Got Milk" milk mustache ads was a no-go. The question is, did any star who wanted to be in a milk ad get left out? That's an affirmative. Until lactose-free milk hit the market, "Got Milk" campaign lover Whoopie Goldberg was skipped over due to being a lactose-intolerant non-milk drinker. Thank goodness for a little patience on her part — and the advent of lactose-free milk — or she's one superstar we would have never seen in a "Got Milk?" commercial. 

For the $25,000 — a practical pittance compared to what she and other "Got Milkers" could command for a regular gig — it's tempting to think that the powers-that-be with the California Milk Processor Board and Milk Processor Education Program would give their eye teeth to schedule a roster of A-Listers for their commercials. Nope. In the '90s, having your face on a "Got Milk" ad was the dairy equivalent of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and even A-Listers had to earn the right to their own star.

Milk is a drink of accompaniments, meaning that most people don't just grab a glass like they do a soda or Gatorade. Instead, milk usually goes with something, like cereal, and other foods too, such as cookies. While celebs wearing a white caterpillar on their upper lip became the public face of the "Got Milk" campaign, there was a very clever piggyback marketing campaign taking place in the background. Early on in the campaign, the milk producers allowed brands like Oreos, as well as cereal brands, to license the "Got Milk" slogan free of charge. And it wasn't just grocery store cookies that adopted "Got Milk." Girl Scouts eventually did, too.

The purpose of piggyback marketing, of course, is to build relationships with complementary but not competing industries to share marketing costs. Cereal and cookie companies make sense. However, the campaign took on new qualities when the piggyback marketing efforts moved past logical, complementary markets, like cookies and cereal, and moved into pop culture at large. Case in point? An agreement to license "Got Milk" to Mattel and Barbie.

Michael Bay, the director and producer known for his work on "The Transformers," "Pearl Harbor," and "The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," got a big break early on in his career when the California Milk Processors tapped him to direct the first "Got Milk" commercial. It might have been a pretty low-key and boring gig for a director who built his reputation on blowing stuff up in movies, but getting him onboard was genius.

The commercial featured a historian trying to win $10,000 for answering the question: Who killed Alexander Hamilton? Were it not for the pesky bite of peanut butter bread stuck to the roof of his mouth and a lack of milk to wash it down, the historian could have uttered something more coherent than "Awon Buuh" and won the $10 grand. The commercial set the tone for the quirky ads that preceded the milk mustache ads.

Bay had recently graduated from film school at the Art Center College in Pasadena when the offer for the gig came. The idea to feature a guy living in a garage with his car sprung from Bay's brain. It made no sense but was funny and just the kind of thing that makes you ponder. It solidified the "Got Milk" campaign as a pop culture force and created a foundational concept for the ads, which focused on the consequences of being deprived of milk at crucial times.

While people have always had a thing for the new "it" guy or girl in Hollywood, the frenzy around celebrities really began to climb in the early 1980s and 1990s when 24-hour TV hit the airwaves. CNN was the first to introduce 24-hour news programming, and MTV followed one year later. Instead of needing to find enough content to fill one half-hour time slot per day, cable news networks needed to fill nearly 50 of them. Celeb news offered plenty of content.

"Got Milk" 2.0, the milk mustache edition, capitalized on the insatiable hunger that ubiquitous celebrity created among the masses. Although TV reigned supreme back then, people still read glossy magazines and appreciated billboards. For the "Got Milk" campaign, this translated into milk mustache gold. True enough, the milk processors spent millions on ads. However, as far as the "Got Milk" ads went, it didn't hurt that celebs like Britney Spears, Christie Brinkley, and the cast of "Friends" already held a spot in the public's consciousness. The heavy lifting was done by those celebs' other vehicles, highlighting the fact that celebrity culture and its followers did a lot to bring the ads forward.

In her book "Annie Leibovitz at Work," photographer Annie Leibovitz shares a very important lesson she learned while photographing the Rolling Stones. A person's association with famous people can give them as much power and fame as actually being famous themselves. That lesson from her work in the 1970s certainly helped her navigate her career in the years that followed. She eventually became a photographer for Rolling Stone magazine, known for her portraits of celebrities. Her use of lighting and ability to bring out the intimate qualities of each person made her a darling of the fashion and celebrity press.

It's no accident that the "Got Milk" photos have the look of high-fashion photography. One-hundred-eighty of the photos came from Annie Leibovitz's camera, and at one time, she fought to be the sole photographer on the project. It made sense from a career perspective. At that time, magazine advertising hit its peak, and having multiple photos spread across multiple glossy magazines meant that the photographer would once again enjoy fame by association, just as she did when she rode along with the Rolling Stones. She was one smart cookie. The milk processors made the photos ubiquitous in magazines and on billboards. She went along for the ride and, in the process, helped create one of the most recognizable photo campaigns in history.