Milk Mustache Database

Notes

The advertisement that started everything. A history enthusiast, alone in a dim warehouse of artefacts, eats a peanut butter sandwich while a radio quiz offers $10,000 for naming who shot Alexander Hamilton. He knows it is Aaron Burr and cannot say it. Agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; creative direction Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein; art direction Erich Joiner; copy Scott Burns and Chuck McBride; directed by Michael Bay before his feature debut; starring Sean Whalen. Won Best in Show at the 1994 Clio Awards. No mustache appears.

Image: frame from the 1993 “Aaron Burr” spot as posted by the CLIO Awards (source).

Further detail: produced by Propaganda Films and shot in a disused Los Angeles foundry. Michael Bay won the Directors Guild commercials award on March 11, 1995, for work that included it. It returned to air in California from July 9, 2002. Sources disagree about its prizes: one says Best in Show at the 1994 Clios, another three Gold Clios and a Silver Lion at Cannes. The board gives the launch month as October 1993; a 1994 trade report says November.

Got Milk? The Book (1999) numbers this Commercial #1 and dates its debut, with “Couple”, to October 1993, with three more spots following in November (p. 62), which supports the board’s October date over the 1994 trade report. It confirms Best in Show at the Clio Awards in July 1994, held in San Francisco (p. 89). Manning writes that Goodby favored Michael Bay as a lesser-known director and that Bay largely ignored the client on set (p. 60); the on-set argument was over a twelve-inch carving knife in an industrial jar of peanut butter and whether the actor should talk with his mouth full and open (p. 45). The script was presented first at the agency’s creative presentation in midsummer 1993 by Chuck, a red-haired writer, with Erich the art director; Manning’s first reaction was “I was unconvinced” (pp. 45, 49).

The got milk? trademark file at the USPTO (serial number 74452556) holds a scan of a VHS cassette received January 12, 1995, as the specimen showing the mark in use; the label reads “California Milk”, ““Aaron Burr” :60”, “01/04/95” and “Goodby, Silverstein & Partners” (the envelope was marked “GOT MILK? tape”). It is in the gallery. The AICP Show archive lists the spot among its 1994 honorees (Production Design; Advertising Excellence / Campaign) with the client recorded as Milk Advisory Board, production company Propaganda Films, director Michael Bay, director of photography Mark Plummer, agency Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein, creative director Jeff Goodby and art director Erich Joiner; its still is in the gallery.

The Dairy Farmers of Washington ran this commercial under licence. An upload on the “90s Commercials” YouTube channel (o1e3n_wKOCw), dated 1996 by the uploader, ends on a got milk? card with a small line that appears to read “Dairy Farmers of Washington” (frames in the gallery; the card is a 120-pixel storyboard frame, so the reading is not certain). Adweek of October 23, 1995, as read by the research pass, says the Washington board was by then running Goodby, Silverstein & Partners’ got milk? television commercials.