Milk Mustache Database

Notes

The original got milk?, and the one that never used a mustache. Jeff Manning was hired as CMPB Executive Director in June 1993 to reverse a fifteen-year decline in Californian milk consumption; a month later he engaged Goodby, Silverstein & Partners of San Francisco. The strategy was deprivation — milk is only noticed when it runs out — which came from a focus-group participant saying exactly that. Goodby produced six advertisements to launch. This is a separate campaign from the Milk Mustache print work: MilkPEP later licensed the tagline for national use, which is why the two became conflated.

Image: got milk? logo, PR Newswire press kit (2020) (source).

More on how it was set up: the board is paid for by three cents on each gallon processed, about $23 million a year. Goodby Silverstein was chosen from a shortlist of four San Francisco agencies, and its planner Jon Steel supplied the insight that people care about milk when they have run out. Licensing to other dairy boards began in 1995; the national Milk Mustache program licensed the line in September 1998. Goodby’s time on the account ended in February 2018, when Gallegos United took over.

From Got Milk? The Book (1999): Manning gives the board’s budget as “around $25 million” (pp. 15, 71), says he was hired as its first employee in June 1993 with no office or letterhead (p. 15), and credits the food-and-milk idea behind his brief to Ken Dudwick, a colleague from decades earlier (p. 18). The line was said by Jeff Goodby as the heading for a pitch presentation board, and the pitch research was Jon Steel’s observation of his own office and a hidden camera inside the agency refrigerator (pp. 21, 28), not a focus-group remark. Six television spots and five outdoor boards were approved in August 1993; “Aaron Burr” and “Couple” debuted in October 1993 and “Kid Vendor”, “Baby & Cat” and “Lifeboat” in November (pp. 60, 62). The national licence came through Tom Gallagher of Dairy Management Inc., with the commercials on national television by October 1995 (pp. 125–126). gotmilk.com was launched on October 1, 1998 (p. 144), not in 2001 as the AEF case history says.

The Statement of Use for the got milk? service mark (USPTO serial number 74452556), signed by Jeff Manning as Executive Director on December 23, 1994, and received January 12, 1995, gives the date of first use of the mark anywhere, and in commerce, as 11/15/93, the manner of use as “advertising and promotional material used in connection with services rendered”, and the applicant as the California Fluid Milk Processor Advisory Board; the notice of allowance is dated 09/13/94. The board’s own date for the first commercials is October 1993; the November 15 date is the one sworn to the trademark office.