Milk advertising then and now: Taylor Swift in a “Got Milk?” ad, and… and… I don’t even know what this is now.
(According to reliable sources, Swift is already working on a song about being dumped by the milk industry.)
Many of you probably remember the famous “Got Milk?” ads, featuring celebrities with a milk mustache. But this week, the milk producers have announced that they will end the “Got Milk” advertising campaign, since, apparently, this campaign hasn’t been working that well in recently, and less and less milk has been sold every year. In fact, milk’s market share has decreased so much that its picture has began appearing on the milk cartons. The industry is working on new slogans to improve milk’s image, and I’ve decided to help them in this difficult task. Here are 10 suggested advertising slogans for milk.
1) Milk! Just don’t think about where it came from!
2) The only beverage Justin Bieber isn’t drinking!
3) Recommended by 4 out of 5 Santas.
4) Milk! The cool white stuff that you don’t have to shovel!
5) Milk. Great for your health, because our cows’ feed contains 20% antibiotics!
6) Un-crunch your cereal!
7) Contains protein, calcium, and milk!
8) Buy our milk, or we will kill the cow!
9) Occupy milk! Drink the 1%!
10) Time to buy a new carton, because the one in your fridge is probably expired. (And no, we don’t know whether you’re supposed to recycle the empty carton or throw it out, either.)
Disclaimer: Cookies not included. For internal use only. Do not drink warm milk and operate heavy machinery. If wings made of milk start growing on your back, stop using the product and consult a physician immediately.
And since we’re on the subject of health, advertising, and helping others, might as well get serious for a minute… A fellow blogger, Merbear74 of Knocked Over By a Feather, has been suffering from fibromyalgia, and recently her condition had become so bad that she has been unable to work, and may lose her home to unpaid taxes. Go here for her full story and the information how to donate, or just spread the word, if you can.
List of X 
Not really directly connected to the post, but on reading at I am reminded of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip where Calvin is wondering about who that first guy was who looked at this creature and said I am going to drink whatever comes out by squeezing a part of its anatomy.
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Or maybe it was a woman who had the brilliant idea to outsource breastfeeding to a cow.
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Does milk need a slogan? You’d think they could get away with just showing pictures of large-breasted women in bikinis…
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I don’t know about that. I suspect that most men, seeing a picture of large-breasted women in bikinis would only have thoughts about large-breasted women in bikinis.
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All sorts of products are sold with large-breasted women in bikinis. All you have to do is put the product name at the end of the commercial.
Or the women could have just gotten out of a giant swimming pool full of milk…
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Sex sells, but it also shorts out the brain circuits. So sex-based advertising shouldn’t be too subtle, and has to actually depict the product – and a swimming pool of milk could work.
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The truth is, the only milk that is actually healthy for human consumption is human milk. So large breasted women ARE a good advertisement for milk.
Just not for cow’s milk.
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Looking at the TV ads makes one think that large-breasted women are a good advertisement for everything.
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Well, what could they possibly be a BAD advertisement for?
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Skinny men?
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Oh, all of a sudden skinny men don’t like big breasts?
I don’t get it. Or else I’m just tired.
Or possibly, it made no sense? I thought all men liked big breasts. Except my Ex. He was actually the only living male that didn’t love huge boobies.
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I meant large-breasted women are not the best advertisement for skinny men. (not my best joke, but I’m tired, too)
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Okay. Now that you explained. it.
Yes, you’re typically much funnier. I forgive you. It’s 1 am.
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I have to make weak jokes sometimes so that the good ones fare better in comparison.
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Well how the Hell else are you supposed to sell large breasted women in bikinis?
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You’re not, because I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. 🙂
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Are you here too?! Ahaha you’re probably right and it pains me to say so! lol
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I am omnipresent. 😉
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I see that! I dig it! 😉
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Doesn’t omnipresence insult your intelligence? 🙂
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Not when it’s me.
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Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for $4 a gallon?
I also thought of the Calvin and Hobbes comic 🙂
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That’s a small price to pay for not having to deal with manure or squeezing cow’s udders.
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There are so many things I wonder about, in terms of “who thought of eating THAT?”
Like olives. Did you ever eat an uncured olive? it’s vile. Who could possibly have eaten one and mistaken it for anything remotely edible? And then developed the whole curing process.
What human being actually figured out, hey, I’m going to add bacteria to milk and it’ll make something I’ll want to eat? Isn’t that sort of what yogurt is ?
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I never eat olives, cured or uncured, so I can’t comment on that. And not yogurt.
But I think yogurt kind of makes sense – someone left milk out, a right bacteria accidentally got in, and that someone decided that he (99% a he) shouldn’t let a “slightly” bad milk to go to waste. Of course, there probably were hundreds of cases of poisoning when the same story happened with the wrong bacteria.
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Exactly.
Disgusting. And yet? Someone decided – hey, let’s ingest this rotten bacteria-laden spoiled milk.
It’ll be great with granola, which hasn’t even been invented yet.
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Or maybe someone tried to commit suicide by eating “spoiled milk”, and then discovered that’s actually not that bad (but may benefit from a granola bar)
Just 200 years ago, someone in New Jersey tried to kill himself by eating tomatoes.
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What the hell?
I hate New Jersey as much as the next person, but how does this even make sense?
Are you drunk?
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As I said, I’m not doing anything drunk. But apparently it wasn’t a suicide but a marketing ploy, while everyone else thought it was a suicide.
And it may not be even true.
http://homecooking.about.com/od/foodlore/a/tomatolore.htm
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OMG, where do you FIND this stuff? That’s beautiful.
“He bravely consumed a basket of tomatoes.” What VALOR.
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On the Internet – the 100% accurate source of 100% truthful information.
(Actually, I read it somewhere – and some of those strange facts I read once stick in my head for a long time)
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Not “sort of”.
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Uncrunch your cereal is the clear winner for me.
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Thanks, my neighbors constantly complain about the noise when I eat my cereal without the milk.
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You’ve outdone yourself. These are all excellent, workable substitutes. Are you in advertising? You should be.
Taylor Swift sells milk AND coke. There’s a big billboard of her in Times Square holding a guitar (as above) next to giant Coke logo. Does she need the cash? Is it just too easy and irresistible to turn down.
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So she gets to destroy teeth and then sell stuff that builds it back up? She definitely doesn’t need the cash, but hello, lookie, it’s her FACE. EVERYWHERE.
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At least it’s a nice face. There’s that.
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Taylor Swift’s does ads for Coke, too? This must be a part of Coke’s new “Sweet and bubbly” campaign.
Thanks, and no, I’m not in advertising. But you could probably tell that just by looking at the ridiculously low count of my Twitter followers.
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I think I can top that. I don’t HAVE a Twitter account. Or a Facebook page. I assume the audience for both would be minuscule, as it is currently for my blog. To me, that would be adding insult to injury. Why exacerbate the deficiencies in my life?
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I have both. I mainly use Twitter to post stuff that I can’t expand into a full-fledged list of 10. And there are some entertaining people there too. But I don’t have kids, don’t photograph food, and don’t post my vacation pictures, so I’m not sure what I need Facebook for.
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Betty White made a joke in Saturday Night Live that when she was young, being forced to look at someone’s vacation pics used to be a form of punishment.
I should set up both FB and Twitter accounts to help promote my blog posts. Not sure what else is do with it.
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I think you should. I know a blogger whose blog’s FB page has almost 20,000 readers but a blog has only a few hundred WP followers.
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ONLY a few hundred followers! I’ll take ONE hundred!
I don’t know…it all sound kind of tedious to maintain. I don’t want to turn it into a goddamn job. I’ve already got one goddamn job and don’t need another.
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Wow, I just looked at your number of followers, and I’m shocked. I thought you had at least a few hundred judging by the number of comments you get. In fact, you get more comment action than some blogs with 50x or 100x the number of your followers.
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They’re a small but vocal bunch. Plus, I try to write posts that instigate discussions or make people pause. I migrated my blog over to a proper WP dot com sight several weeks ago with the specific intent of generating a wider audience. It’s a slow slog but every week I pick up a few more readers. Perhaps by 2015 I’ll hit that illusive 100 mark. Fingers crossed!
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Facebook is a lying whore. It’s a cyber depiction of America’s relationship with credit.
I don’t have a FB or Twitter for my blog either. Because promoting my blog is not high on my list of priorities.
People with stupendous followings – they freaking tweet CONSTANTLY. Blog success is sometimes less about writing and more about marketing. I haven’t mastered the art of full time self promotion either, but when we do, boy are WE GOING TO BE HUGE!!
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I don’t think you have to promote your blog. I think anyone who ends up on it and reads one of your posts to the end immediately gets hooked.
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Wow! That is such a great compliment.
But you know what I mean. Some bloggers are SERIOUS about blogging. They want to be professional bloggers. I can just tell. Good for them. Go for it.
I just can’t spend all my time tweeting and twatting and facebooking, etc. I had a social media ntern for my business last summer. She did all that stuff for my company’s facebook and twitter accounts.
I haven’t posted one thing since she went back to college.
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I don’t really get how you can become a professional blogger. Do you run tons of ads? Write paid posts? I’d rather get paid at my job and do this for fun.
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Well, some people are trying to become the next James Altucher.
The next The Bloggess.
I guess they make a living writing books; they sell shit on their blogs, they sell ad space. All of that.
We shouldn’t get into this in the open. But surely you can spot which bloggers are working the self-promotion shit like crazy. For fuck’s sake!
No more. I have nothing against that. And yes, I’d rather have a regular job and blog for fun, too. I would not like to be pressured to come up with a blog post. That would be excruciating for me.
To each his own. That’s what makes the world go round! Yay for diversity!
And for cow’s milk, which is terrible for humans!
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I’ll drink milk to that – and that would be the terrible cow’s milk, to make it my re-enactment of Colonel Johnson’s brave act.
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I’m currently eating a basket of tomatoes, as we speak.
It’s a Jersey thing.
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Just don’t mix it with cow’s milk, and you might be ok.
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How about “The touch, the feel of milk, that stuff Mom makes you drink?”
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That was me – I was hoping to go under the government radar there.
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That Anon was me – I was hoping to fly under the government radar there.
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The NSA appreciates your voluntary confession and thanks you for your cooperation.
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I’m not sure, “that stuff Mom makes you eat” tagline hasn’t been working very well for broccoli.
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And WordPress was ignoring my comment, then put it in twice. It’s in on the conspiracy!
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WordPress: Got Conspiracy?
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This deserves a better response than I have time for at the moment. Nuff said. But I will return. Oh yes I will.
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And I shall hold off on the snarky response till then.
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I’ve never been a milk drinker, other than in cereal, but stopped that recently after my sister told me about the inner working of dairy farms. She asked why I would want to drink dead babies’ milk, because they take the baby cows, raise them as veal, then slaughter them while milking the moms for our consumption. So that’s what I now think of. Dead baby’s milk. Not a good slogan.
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I was also thinking of “Stolen from the cow’s children”, but yours has more punch. I mean, who wouldn’t want some dead babies’s milk in their cup?.
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Taste the heartbreak and sorrow!
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OMG, this – dead cow babies milk – that’s it!
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Good concise jokes, and I’m a milk drinker….Joke #10 was the only weak one–as the Vietnamese might have said back in the ’60’s, Number 10 was Numba 10. But the rest were very good. And lean too…
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Thanks – but I liked #10 (it was actually 2 for 1 deal of 2 separate jokes that I couldn’t choose to use.) But since you’re not fully satisfied with my product, I can offer to exchange it for one of the following:
Made by India’s holiest animal!
Stolen from the cows’ children!
It’s Okay to drink and drive!
Don’t cry over spilled milk! Buy more!
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Perhaps people actually started looking at the label on the side of the cartoon and realized how many carbs and how much sugar was in just one small cup of milk and decided to get their calcium some other way.
If it weren’t for cereal and chocolate syrup, I wouldn’t ever consume milk at all, despite your very clever slogans for them.
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If you are watching your weight, I can recommend chalk: it’s 40% calcium, no fat, no sugar, no calories. It’s also white, so you could kind of make milk out of it. The taste would be bad, but that’s a common problem with healthy foods.
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Ohhhhh…..I’ll hafta try that.
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11. Milk–just pretend it’s cow piss!!! Wait……
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I don’t think you’re milking the correct part of the cow.
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ahaha 4-5 Santa’s!! The cool white stuph you don’t have to shovel! Soo funny.
Thank you for posting about Mer!
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Well, you started this whole thing, so most of the credit goes to you. I’ve just spread the word some more (and donated some).
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It goes to everyone who’s made a difference! Thank you and…
“Milk get your daily dose of hormones”
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“Fat-free, All-hormone.”
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There you go and coat your stomach
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And, by the way – “Milk. Protect your stomach from Coca Cola”
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and comes in different flavours. There’s even milk of magnesia
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There’s even milk of poppy in the Game of Thrones, but I believe it’s a Class A controlled substance according to the US law.
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ha!
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The Disclaimer was the best part. I don’t know why these other commenters can’t see that. And shouldn’t there be something about a four-hour erection in there?
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It’s probably because we tend not to pay too much attention to disclaimers and small print in general. 🙂 Although, if people did pay attention, putting something about a four-hour erection in the disclaimer would probably double or triple the milk sales.
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Thank you X, for the shout out. I drink soy milk once in awhile..reminds me of chalk, actually.
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I really hope this helps.
And I think I’d rather chew chalk than drink soy milk. I really dislike those foods that pretend to be something they’re not – like almost anything made of soy.
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Looks like I will be switching soon, damn it. Good chance I am lactose intolerant. Boo.
It has, so much…just in awe of how awesome this all has been. Thank you.
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In my sci-fi books, I put forth the premise that aliens love everything that humans do… except for holding mammals hostage, touching their boobs, and stealing their milk.
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So is killing and eating the animals still ok with the aliens? (I’m not judging, I like meat more than I like vegetables.)
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yes… there is a historical natural imperative involved in the prey/predator relationship.
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It’s ok for us humans, because we’re natural predators. But it’s also possible for a sentient race of aliens to evolve from a herbivore species. These aliens would have problems with our meat-eating customs.
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I talked about that too… I have created more than 100 new races for the series
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Great minds think alike. Though I haven’t created anything near 100 new alien races.
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You only need ten… HA!
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Right 🙂
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Do a list of ten made up alien races… it isn’t as easy as it seems…
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It sounds really hard, so I’m not even going to try.
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It seems like all the ideas have already been done.
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“In fact, milk’s market share has decreased so much that its picture has began appearing on the milk cartons.”—Ha! Very clever. Loved #8 and 9, too!
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Thank you! I don’t know if they still print missing kids’ pictures on cartons, actually. All I see on my cartons now are pictures of cows.
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Cow’s milk – not almond – not soy! Got tit?
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I think that for a cow, it would be more appropriate as “Gotta udder?”
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Thanks for spreading the message to help save Merry’s home. 😀
And thanks for the laughs about milk too. It does kind of gross me out when I think about where it comes from. And I really try hard not to think about everything they put in the cow feed that is then getting passed on to us. I kept expecting one of the ten to pop up as a cookie’s best friend, … but, the disclaimer was a nice touch. So, I wasn’t disappointed.
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Well, I couldn’t have milk without the cookie, so I had no choice in the matter. 🙂
A lot of common foods are actually naturally weird once we really start thinking about it – and I’m not even talking about exotic foods like fried spiders. Just regular honey or eggs would have seemed totally alien as food concepts if we hadn’t grown up thinking of them as “regular food”.
Or the processed foods, I can’t even begin to imagine what sort of stuff goes there – chemical, food coloring made of beetles, and so on, Food is fun.
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Have you done a list about the craziness of food and what people must have been thinking to have tried things the first time?
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I have not, so if you’d like, you can write it.
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Hah!! Tempting actually… Not sure what I’m going to write about today, so might as well be something silly like a list.
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Oh I can just taste a cool frosty mug … Only not of milk!
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“I don’t always taste a cool frosty mug, but when I do, it’s not milk either.”
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X, I live not far from the Biebs. I saw him drinking milk from a cow in a farmer’s field the other day. Please explain this phenomenon.
And I’m sorry, but the generic cow-based milk is now no longer the only milk you know… we have milk made out of soy. And rice. And almonds. We have milk made out of almonds. I love saying that.
I have a further question: why don’t we feed human milk to cows? Wouldn’t that somewhat make sense?
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Bieber drinking milk from a cow? As in, directly from the udder? That’s because he is a cowsucker.
No, it doesn’t make sense to feed cows with human milk. Humans and cows just don’t produce the same amount of milk: a cow makes something like 5-6 gallons a day; I doubt any woman could match that. Also, cows don’t have jobs, and they never ask to switch to the formula because they are eager to get back to work.
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You know the Biebs sucks udder.
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I have always hated milk. Even as a child, hated it. Thought it was disgusting and would spill it whenever I had the opportunity. My mother once poured an entire pitcher over my head in retribution. Milk, bah.
These were awesome, especially 2, 8, 9.
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They’re going with “Milk Life”? Interesting choice, because it’s so…interesting.
I bet sales would skyrocket if they really publicized that apparent drink milk/sprout wings connection. I’d buy some.
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“Milk life” – this motto is so bland and plain that it perfectly represents milk. And I don’t think that kids will be really impressed by the number of grams of protein in a cup of milk.
There are other ways to increase milk sales besides milk wings: for example, include a warning that milk may cause vivid hallucinations or prolonged erection.
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Yeah, because I need more commercials to come on with warnings about erections lasting more than 4 hours when I’m watching TV with my 84-year-old mother. I used to think the mother/daughter “do you douche?” commercials were bad!
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Since I didn’t buy the cow, shouldn’t I be able to get the milk for free?
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Haha!
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“In fact, milk’s market share has decreased so much that its picture has began appearing on the milk cartons”
THIS.
i hope you don’t mind my snarking all over your blog. And by the way, I recently joined the newly formed Alliance of the Damned – and as my title, I’m using Queen of Snark. And crediting YOU for the title!
What the DOG is coming off that little girl’s shoulders? Milk/water wings? That’s just the stupidest thing ever.
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I don’t know what’s up with those wings, either. “Milk: makes you want to jump into a public pool”?
Your snarkery is always welcome.
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“Don’t cry over spilled milk, buy more…”
You and I are going to have to collaborate on something. I don’t know what. Maybe just hijacking other people’s blogs. Let’s target one blog, and make 80 comments back and forth. While drunk. Only sober.
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I’m fine with that. Pick the victim.
(I do everything sober. Even drinking.)
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Well, we kinda hijacked Jimmy Norman’s blog that one night.
I have to think about it. Trent, maybe? Or should it be someone who would not even remotely appreciate it?
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I think you already found the victim and it is me 🙂
But seriously, we can do Trent – or someone else, but how would we know if that blogger would our would not appreciate it?
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Well, we could just pick someone randomly that neither of us has ever followed or heard of.
That could be pretty hilarious. Just show up one day, and start commenting back and forth, and not even about their post.
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I feel like we laid out the whole plot in the open, so that if that blogger gets curious and checks out my blog, this whole plan will be here.
I’ll need to cover up first by at least posting another post above this, or delete the whole thread…
…why do I suddenly feel like I’m Chris Christie?
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Don’t delete the thread! It’s hilarious!
We won’t do it right away. Take your time. Post again.
Stealth.
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Okay. And by the way, thank you for setting a comment record on my blog. It was a good battle practice.
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“Milk…makes you hallucinate you have wings and can fly.”
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“Oh-oh, I think we gave you the milk of poppy instead of the regular one…”
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Didn’t Merv Griffin have a daughter who jumped out of a window while on hallucinogenics?
Who is Merv Griffin? Am I hallucinating?
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I don’t even know who Merv Griffin is, so I assume you are. 🙂
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I think he was a talk show host in the 60’s?
I just remember this urban legend druggy rumor about his daughter. Decades later.
Now I’m going to google this guy to see if I even spelled his name right.
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Should i also consult a physician if I have a 4 hour erection?
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Definitely. Even the very fact that you have an erection should be a cause for concern.
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I was thinking that too – but maybe the hormones that the cows eat will grow me some ‘gentleman’s sausage’.
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I don’t think they feed the cows with testosterone, so you probably need not worry about that. But, apparently, growing milk wings is a possibility.
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I’ll take it – I’m not proud. It’s probably the tap water that will grow penises (or peni)
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I’m not sure about the correct plural form, and I don’t think I want to google that, either 🙂
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Come on – brave it out List o’X.
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My Lord, X, this was your greatest work outside of the political sphere… EVER!
Seriously, this was brilliant on every level.
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“Got Milk” reminds me of bad maternity tees from 10 years ago. It’s probably time to make a change. Your slogans would TOTALLY be helpful. Nicely done as usual : )
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Yes, Got Milk? does kind of sound like a snide remark addressed to a new mother. Except then it would probably be used to sell baby formula.
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It really was a maternity tee – swear!
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PS thanks for the heads up on Knocked Over By A Feather – I validated her : )
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Great list! Each one made me laugh.
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Thank you!
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#9. Clearly the best.
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Thank you. Because no other drink makes as powerful a political statement as this.
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