There's a lot to learn from milk ads.
By the early 1970s, the dairy industry was watching its core product slowly disappear from American life. We were drinking 30 gallons of milk, per person, every year. Down from 45 gallons just fifteen years earlier.
(Guess now: how much do we drink today? I put it below.)
The industry's answer was two of the most famous campaigns in advertising history. Together, they make a near-perfect A/B test.
Campaign one: Got Milk. California, 1993.
The ad agency ran an experiment first. They asked people to give up milk for two weeks. Turns out nobody missed milk itself. They missed it at one specific moment: cereal in the bowl, carton empty.
So that's what the ads sold: the panic of running out.
The agency literally called it the deprivation strategy.
It worked. 1994 was the first year California milk sales rose in over a decade, from 740 million gallons to 755 million.
Campaign two: the milk mustache. National, 1995.
Supermodels, quarterbacks, eventually Michael Jordan, all wearing the white mustache. It became one of the most recognized campaigns in American history.
Everybody knew it. It got something like 90% brand recognition nationwide. It was a massive success… for awareness.
But national consumption fell the whole time.
So put the two side by side.
The unglamorous panic ad sold milk to people who already drank it. The celebrity ads sold awareness. And that’s it.
The takeaway:
Don't confuse eyeballs with sales. Track, and act on, the metric that actually pays you.
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Vitamins and painkillers
The classic ad wisdom says "sell painkillers, not vitamins."
Milk complicates that. The painkiller ad worked, but only on existing customers, and only a little. The celebrity ad won every award except the customer's wallet.
Before your next campaign, ask: does this message make the customer feel small (you're missing something) or capable (you could be someone)?
I love Donald Miller's marketing book Building a StoryBrand for solving problems like this. He lays out the paint-by-numbers story that makes your customer the hero in your brand’s story. Worth a read if you ever plan to touch marketing.
Now go sell some vitamins. Or painkillers. Or whatever makes actual $$$.
Michael
P.S. Today we only drink about 14.8 gallons of milk, per person, per year. I drink about zero.
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