Got Milk?

Planet In Need
Category: Beverages, Non-Alcohol
Agency: Goodby, Silverstein &
Partners
Client: California Milk Processor
Board

Strategic Challenge
The story behind the original got milk?
campaign is relatively well-known and
documented. After years of declining per
capita sales in California, a fresh initiative
was launched in 1993 to reactivate milk
purchasing.

After extensive research and some intuitive

guesswork, the client and agency arrived at the
realization that they were marketing a product that
nobody cared about unless it wasnt available.
The classic Deprivation campaign was born,
notable for the fact that the product hero rarely
appeared in the advertising itself.

got milk?
/Deprivation worked, and sales
increased as people
started buying and keeping milk in
the fridge.
got milk? was able to keep milk fresh (no
pun intended) and became one of the
countrys longest running and most liked
campaigns.

However, by 2005 the campaign

appeared to be running into
problems. Evidence suggested an
idea that had launched a thousand
imitators
(got trash?, got chips?, got toner? and even,
memorably, got porn?) had become part of the
vernacular but was no longer standing out.
The campaign was 13 years old and needed
refreshing.

More problematic, so did milk. Milk

was now competing in a category
experiencing 39% growth (Source:
200204 Non-Alcoholic Beverages
Category sales, BevNet.com).
A flood of bottled water, enhanced vitamin
drinks, energy potions and even pomegranate
juices all promised instant health and vitality.
Calcium, milks unique selling point, was now in
everything from orange juice to soy milk to 7-up,
bread and pasta.

With all these newer, exciting healthy drink

options, its not surprising that milk was
starting to lose its special ness.
In-depth discussion groups with consumers
revealed that they felt milk had always been
around and always would be around, so if
both were so healthy, why not try out these
more innovative options?

And, adding to a perfect storm, the

low-carb diet craze of the early
00s impacted the got milk?
Idea.
If people were deliberately avoiding cookies,
brownies and cakes (and according to some
estimates 40% of them wereMay 05 Time
Magazine), then it was even easier for them to
avoid the milk that was supposed to go with
baked goods in the first place.

Milk needed an extreme makeover,

but that was easier said than done.

The beverage category could and

was innovating constantly.
But milk wasnt changingand it couldnt.
Produced and marketed by a consortium
of dairies, even the pricing and packaging
was unlikely to change.

Simply put, milk couldnt

reengineer itself

it could only reengineer

how consumers perceive
it

Agency objectives were clear

we needed to shift our strategy
from a must stock to a must
drink idea.
Agency needed to reestablish the value of
milk to stop people from taking it for
granted. And to do that we needed to
reclaim our health credentials.

More specific, milk had to:

i) Significantly increase the sales trend of white
milk in California vs. rest of the U.S. by at least .
25% (in a commodity category, even a marginal
increase can have a big impact on the bottom
line)
ii) Significantly increase frequency of milk
consumption among current CA milk drinkers
vs.YAG
iii) Reclaim milks healthy positioning as
measured in annual tracking attributes

Target Audience: Turning milk

daters into the marrying kind
Demographically speaking, while kids are
certainly among some of the heaviest milk
drinkers, they are not voluntary decision
makers about milk!

Change could only really come

about by impacting adults in
California.
Given that the vast majority of milk usage
occurs in the home, staying top of mind
with primary grocery shoppers
(moms/dads/single heads of households)
was key.

Psychographically agency identified

a segment of milk drinkers who had
similar attitudes and behaviors to
heaviest drinkers but, more
important, 64% of them said they
wanted to drink more milk than
they were currently consuming.
They were adults who currently dated milk at
least 3+ times a week, but were open to seeing
other healthy beverages.

Their long-term relationship with

milk was still important to them,
it just wasnt always as special
or as top of mind as it once had
been.
Once agency had defined its target, it
turned its attention to messaging.

The Big Idea

Milk as wonder-drink
Ironically, for got milk to evolve it
needed to dig back to ideas it had
been asked to ignore a
decade earlier.
Whereas in the early 90s attitudes about milk
were not the problem (everyone knew it was good
for you), by 2005 attitudes had become clouded
(milk was still good for youto a degreebut then
so many other things were, too).

To boost consumption agency

needed to re-motivate milk drinkers
and reclaim good for you in an
interesting and relevant way.
To reintroduce a product that everyone
already knew everything about agency
had to start over with milk, as if no one
had ever seen it before.

Agency pored over scientific studies,

milk nutritional stats, physician
feedback and old-fashioned common
sense to arrive at messaging and
claims that were potential new
news in the milk story.

Milk can help you sleep (our mothers

knew that).
Milk can rebuild muscle tissue (sports
physicians and some sportsmen know
that).
Its good for hair, skin, nails and
reduced cavities (we didnt know that).
It can also reduce symptoms of P.M.S. (seriously).

Consumer discussions revealed that none

of the benefits represented a silver bullet.
But as a bundle they were interesting and
presented the opportunity to create a multibenefit product story that was immediately
relevant and motivating.
This new combo-pack of benefits actually made
people think about milk in a different way; not just
as being good for them but as a natural cureall.

However, there was a problem with

this.

The new milk story was not

interesting if consumers could see
it coming from milk right away.
Everyone thought they knew milk. And
nobody was open to being amazed.

It became clear that the strategy

had to create enough space to
allow for amazement before they
knew who it was coming from.
In effect, milk had to ambush the
consumer to get them to pay
attention.

Agency most compelling

strategic idea to do this:

Introducing the most amazing

super-drink ever.
(its milk by the way)

who on earth could see milk in a new

way? And who wouldnt have it?
The answer was actually
found on a distant planet called
Brittlelactica.
Inhabited by well-intentioned but naive
calcium deprived aliens suffering from brittle
bones and weak muscles, Brittlelactica was
an entire planet of milk deprivation split into
regions:

PMStonia, Cavitopia, Insomniastan and

(our favorite) Papau Hairthinny.
To bring this idea to life agency created
five linked TV spots chronicling the alien
quest to find and bring back the white
wonder tonic that was believed to cure
all their ailments.
Extensive online efforts drove traffic to the
planetinneed.com site where the citizens of each region
shared their health woes and hopes for a cure.

All quest stories have a focus.

Castles, dragons, treasure troves
or magic rings.
So ours had a cowan unsuspecting
California dairy cowor Da Iry as the
aliens called her. Da Iry, the provider of the
magic elixir.

Planet in Need campaign

For two weeks before its main Planet in Need
campaign launched, agency plastered major
metropolitan areas in California with wild
postings and fliers.
As well as planted news stories on the cover of
the Weekly World News (prominently displayed
on magazine racks in grocery store checkout
lanes) about a strange phenomenon of alien
cow abduction.

Cows were vanishing, milk yield

was threatened. Dairy farmers
were offering rewards or
disguising their herds.
Online banners led curious surfers to the
unbranded cowabduction.com site where they
could participate by uploading photos of their own
missing cows or watch a video of genuine local
California dairy farmers lamenting their loss.

The online teaser (a first for got

milk?) worked. Between March and
August 2006 cowabduction.com
received nearly 700,000 hits and
more than 1,000 online page links.
During the same time frame
planetinneed.com received 315,000 total
hits, with an average of 14,300 per week.
And in a digital first for a cow, Da Iry even
received her own MySpace page.

In just one month (August 06) she

received 132,000 page views and
made more than 15,000 MySpace
friends. Not bad for a cow with
indifferent computer skills

Results
In the six-month period during the campaign
California sales increased an average of 0.25%
a week.
This number may not appear immediately
significant, but it is a considerable leap over
sales in the rest of the country, which were
virtually stagnant, at only 0.003% average
growth. (Note: sales trends from March 05 to 06
in CA and rest of US mirrored each other)