Why did every nineties celebrity get a milk
mustache? Yeah.
These are from an entire book about the milk mustache ads.
Yes, really, basically this whole ad campaign is, “look, a famous person looks kind of funny.
I should buy milk now.” But this wasn't just a
successful ad campaign that ran from around 1995 to 2015.
The reason all these people have milk mustaches is part of a bigger story about
the history of American milk and a billion dollars spent trying to sell cow juice.
I am going to try to recreate one of these milk mustache photos. I just need to find the most
nineties looking outfit that I have. I think I'm ready to recreate this milk mustache photo.
Now just have to do some, uh, some styling.
The straightforward explanation of the milk mustache campaign is in this book that the
ad agency put out, and it starts with a sandwich. “Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel?”
Michael Bay, yes, Transformers director Michael Bay directed this commercial in 1993 for the
California Milk Processors Board. It was about a lunching museum curator who couldn't win a
sweepstakes because he didn't have the milk to wash down his sandwich and say the answer.
“I'm afraid your time is almost up. Ooh, I'm sorry. Maybe next time.”
I'm mentioning this for two reasons. One as this Fast Company article describes,
got milk became mushed together in the public consciousness with the
milk mustache campaign and they soon licensed it as the national tagline. It also showed the
impact that a really good ad could have on the culture, even if it was for something like milk.
And that affected the milk mustache ad campaign that started a couple of years later.
Bozell Worldwide made the campaign and after some false starts, they hired legendary
rolling stone photographer, Annie Leibovitz to photograph big celebrities with milk mustaches.
Each celebrity got $25,000 to do it. And that is when the questions start. Who made
these magazine ads ubiquitous? And then you turn to the acknowledgements at the
end of this book and you find the folks that made it all possible.
The milk processors board. All right. Let's style it.
I feel like I'm stuck with the anachronistic facial hair, but I can take off the glasses.
Middle part is an art. This is the entire reason I've been holding off on
a haircut by the way, because right now it looked like Gary Oldman's, emo cousin, Gary Sadman.
Speaking of Depression. When milk prices crashed during
the great depression farmers dumped good milk out to try to raise prices. That was a problem.
“In Iowa, the farmers holiday association organizers to block the flow of farm product
to the city in an attempt to force prices up. It is illegal action, but one farmer says,
‘seems to me, there was a tea party in Boston that was illegal too.”
This chaos led to Federal Milk Marketing Orders. These milk mustache ads, they are connected to the
history of the government designed milk market in the United States. There's a whole history,
but basically you need to know that the Federal government has set minimum milk prices,
among other things, for a long time in hopes of keeping the market stable.
No more milk dumping. For the record, I'm also against milk dumping.
Don't dump your milk. Phil Edwards, 2024. This stuff is complicated. You don't need
to know all the details, but stuff like this map shows the complexity of prices in the market. It's
split into regions too. That's when there's no big national milk brand, there's no Coke of milk.
It's not allowed. The government has a lot
of sway with these commodities, milk, beef, or cheese, and they want the market to be stable.
They have for a long time. That extended eventually to promotion as well.
In 1983, the Dairy Production Stabilization Act established that farmers had to pay 15 cents
for every a hundred pounds of milk to promote dairy in a bunch of ways.
That led to the Fluid Milk Promotion Act of 1990, specifically the milk part of dairy.
Large processors paid 20 cents per a hundred pounds. That adds up to a lot
of money. The funds went to the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board, which ran stuff
on their own and through a group called MilkPEP. They used it to deploy generic milk, no brands.
It got started in 1990, but wasn't really rolling until 1994. And that's when the
milk mustache campaign started to the tune of $65 million. The timing there, that is a key element.
This chart shows milk consumption per person from 1978 on. Milk was flopping. Hard.
After that spend in 1994, the milk board spent $71 million on milk mustache ads in 1995,
just to try to fix it. This 2001 table shows the
thinking they use throughout the campaign. They targeted celebrity choice and ad copy
to a milk message. Cal Ripken Jr. uses milk to stay active. Jackie Chan grows
bones. Noah Wiley is attractive to women. Ad spend went from $19 million in 1990
to peaking in 1996 at $106 million. But here's the question — did $106 million on milk mustaches,
did it actually work? Let's do this.
Let's finish off this chart. What happened after the milk board spent a $100 million a year
giving milk mustaches to pretty people? Milk consumption kept going down.
Um, when it comes to business theories like these, they’re indistinguishable from,
like, wizard’s spells to me. I'm sure there are very smart,
credible people doing them. So there probably is some truth to it.
But what even I can see is that milk sales continued to go down, even as the population
of the United States went up. Even industry milk people became skeptical of these generic
milk ads. In 1983, 72% of milk processors voted for the advertising program. In 1996, 65% voted
for it. By 1998, that number was down to 54%. In 2002, the program just became permanent,
no more votes. They were going in the wrong direction anyway.
In one Congressional hearing, one processor noted the complaints. Forcing ads felt unconstitutional.
It did not increase consumption. And it made milk more costly for everybody. So what's the takeaway?
For one, it's just weird that the Great Depression connects
to this ad campaign that helped make Ivana Trump slightly more famous.
The other is, the United States decided to keep milk policy in the Depression era. Milk declined
because people didn't want it or because milk can't compete. And instead of farmers pivoting
to something that people actually wanted, we got milk mustaches that helped famous
people become slightly more famous and help pay off the three martini lunch expense accounts
of glossy magazine editors who were dining out on the last gasp of a print
era that could be funded by a hundred million dollar campaign to sell milk.
The ads and got milk end with a question mark, but really it should be a statement. You've got milk.
You're not allowed to run out of it. All
right. That is it for this one. Uh, I have an actual mustache and I couldn't get a milk
mustache. So little conspiracy theory for you there. I had to add mine in Photoshop.
Uh, anyway, I'm going to put this ad up on my incredibly influential Instagram and people are
going to wonder why I look like an extra who escaped from the set of Friends. Uh, also if
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