Milk Mustache Database

Notes

A black-and-white series about a town where there is never any milk. Two spots aired in August 1997 and two later that year; the board dropped the series by July 1998. Adweek calls the town Drysville.

Made by: California Milk Processor Board; agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

Got Milk? The Book (1999) devotes a chapter to the series, which it calls Drysville (pp. 171–184). The redesign began in February 1997; Jeff Goodby directed; four commercials were shot over ten days in nine locations in Sonoma County (p. 180). “Ballad” began running in October 1997, and “Patrol Car” (Commercial #31) and “Letter Home” in December 1997 (pp. 180–181), later than the August 1997 start in the trade report; both dates are kept here. The series was dropped because research found it worked on people’s heads rather than their stomachs: the deprivation was happening to the people of Drysville, not to the viewer (p. 182).

The AICP Show archive lists “Ballad” among its 1998 honorees (Copywriting), client recorded as California Fluid Milk Processor, production company @radical.media, director Jeff Goodby, director of photography Max Malkin, art director Amy Nicholson, writer Blake Daley, producer Debbie King. Its still, the pre-teen boy with the milk pin-up that the book describes (p. 179), is in the gallery.

Players for three of the four spots are below: “Ballad” (identification not confirmed), “Patrol Car” (an upload titled “patrol car”) and “Drysville Cafe” (the agency’s own upload, so titled). No upload has been confirmed as “Letter Home”: the one so titled by a fan (X9LcjNUQbzs, “still no milk”) shows a diner scene and may be “Drysville Cafe”; its frames are in the gallery.