Milk Mustache Database

Notes

University of Wisconsin basketball coaches Dick Bennett and Jane Albright, both with milk mustaches, holding a basketball. The copy begins “See Dick and Jane…” and the sign-off is “WISCONSIN MILK — The Mustache of Distinction”. Printed ©1997 Dane County Dairy Promotion Committee.

Wisconsin milk advertising, as far as the sources found in October 2026 show it. The Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board (Madison), set up after the dairy farmers’ 1983 marketing order, broke from the American Dairy Association in late 1987 (Advertising Age, 1989). In June 1992 the board was still mailing premiums printed with the national dairy board line “Milk …it does a body good!” (an inflatable cow, meter postmark June 25, 1992, has its own entry); the Dairy Council of Wisconsin used the same line on an undated Paul Molitor magnet, and its “Grow Like a Pro” Chicago Bulls set is dated 1989-90 by collectors. “Wisconsin Milk — The Mustache of Distinction” is the state’s own 1997 line, on this poster and its companion; University of Wisconsin basketball media guides for 1997-98 to 2000-01 reprint the Bennett and Albright photograph with the credit “Copyright 1997 Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board. Photography by Greg Sutter”, while the poster itself prints © 1997 Dane County Dairy Promotion Committee. The Packers media guides for 1997 to 2005 list the board among Brett Favre’s endorsements, but the only Favre piece a source describes is a 1997 cheese poster. From 2002 the board’s chocolate-milk pieces carry licensed campaign marks or lines of its own: “Eye Love Chocolate Milk” (a retail display contest of autumn 2002, per Supermarket News), “got chocolate milk?” and “Badger Your Parents for Chocolate Milk!” on the Bucky Badger growth poster (© 2003), and “Cool, Creamy Chocolate Milk – Score Some Today!” on the 2005 Packers cups. No 1990s board piece carrying got milk? was found; the agency is not established.

A second search (October 2026) adds this to the Wisconsin history above. Adweek of November 25, 1991, reports that Hoffman, York & Compton of Milwaukee won the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board’s $4-5 million consumer account; before that the trade press names D’Arcy MacManus Masius (1985) and, in 1988, a review in which Foote, Cone & Belding was recommended. A board-sponsored milk commercial of about 1985 closes on the American Dairy Association’s national line “Milk’s got more!” over the card “Sponsored by Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board / american dairy association” (it has its own entry, extra-1491). The board registered no fluid-milk slogan as a trademark in the 1990s, and no trade-press, book or newspaper index searched mentions “The Mustache of Distinction”. The board’s minutes and reports for 1983-1994 are kept by the Wisconsin Historical Society (state records Series 2269); the finding aid lists no advertising proofs.

In June 1997 the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board also gave out posters of the national Brett Favre milk mustache ad, at its cow tent at the June Dairy Month kickoff in Little Chute (The Reporter, Fond du Lac, June 15, 1997, p. 30; the photograph is in the gallery of canonical-045).