There’s a word in the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB) moniker that could in a very real sense be regarded as superfluous: “California.” Indeed this client goes well beyond the geography of a single state. The CMPB has truly been global in its reach and scope due to an advertising and marketing acumen that emerged in 1993 with its “got milk?”–a query that has become part of and taken different forms in mainstream popular culture. Clearly a significant share of the credit goes to Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), San Francisco, with “got milk?” getting its first big stage in the classic “Aaron Burr” commercial directed by Michael Bay, then of the now defunct Propaganda Films, now with The Institute for the Development of Enhanced Perceptual Awareness, a Venice, Calif.-based production company he co-founded with executive producer Scott Gardenhour.
But like with any great advertising and marketing, an agency excels when paired with a great client. The CMPB fits that bill. Rather than rest on its “Aaron Burr” laurels, the Milk Board has built upon its creatively inspired foundation with lauded commercials, and in recent years with websites, gaming and other forms of interactive media.
The “California” client has indeed become a worldwide phenomenon and 2009 was a remarkable chapter in its marketing legacy, particularly the brand’s efforts in the teenage and Hispanic markets through agencies GS&P, and Grupo Gallegos, Long Beach, Calif., respectively.
On the teenager front, let’s backtrack a bit to a creative brief in late ’07/early ’08 which simply called for making milk as cool as Red Bull to the teen demographic. This resulted in the ’08 launch of White Gold, a spandex-clad, egocentric rock star brandishing a guitar full of milk. Lead performer White Gold and his posse, the Calcium Twins, were launched on a MySpace page. Ultimately the act had five songs on iTunes, three full-length music videos and thousands of 12 to 17-year-old fans who thought the band was real.
Steve James, executive director of the CMPB, said that post-campaign research in early ’09 among teens showed that they wanted more of White Gold. So the question was: What do you do for an encore?
“Rather than do another couple of music videos,” related James, “we wanted to crank it up and take White Gold to the next level. A rock legend in his own mind, he of course thought he was major enough of a talent to create and star in his own rock opera. As a long-form piece, we realized this couldn’t live on television and it wasn’t enough for it to live on YouTube as a curiosity. We decided to make it something bigger–an online rock opera we would help drive traffic to, but with a purpose, launching a competition whereby teens in California could gain arts program funding for their high schools.”
The 20-minute online rock opera, Battle for Milkquarious, debuted Oct. 5 on www.milkquarious.com. White Gold was billed as the star, writer and producer for the rock opera which chronicles his quest to save his hometown of Milkquarious from a devastating milk shortage. The villain Nasterious steals the town’s milk and kidnaps White Gold’s love interest, Strawberry Summers. White Gold travels across the galaxy to rescue her and return the stolen milk to the townspeople.
Directed by Tom Kuntz of MJZ, the tongue-in-cheek rock opera features six songs from Goodby associate creative director/copywriter/lyricist Andrew Bancroft, with music composed and performed by the noted Detroit-based rock band Electric Six.
Driving traffic to the rock opera website have been four TV spots (one of which appeared during the MTV Video Music Awards telecast), a YouTube preview clip, and a piece on Channel One, the in-classroom news network in California high schools.
The latter medium carries a direct message to California high school students, encouraging them to enter a contest by submitting their video entries recreating one of the scenes from the rock opera. Online entry deadline is Dec. 20. A panel of judges will decide on nine semifinal entries, with the tenth being named “people’s choice” by popular vote online. The grand prize winner will also be chosen online by popular vote on or about January 25, 2010. The winner will have his or her high school receive $20,000 to help fund an arts program. The second place school will win $10,000, and eight runners-up will each collect $2,500 in funding.
The call to entries on Channel One features White Gold upset over budget cutbacks in California resulting in some schools having to put the axe to their arts programs. He declares that he’s going to do something about restoring arts programs via his rock opera-driven competition.
“In a recession, arts programs are often the first to lose funding in public schools,” said James. “The competition makes for a social component that could engage teens in the rock opera on another level. Scholastic made this part of not just a cool thing to do but also developed a lesson plan teaching about heroes and the journeys of heroes, bringing in the work of author Joseph Campbell [centering on the journey of the archetypal hero found in world mythologies; Campbell’s work has influenced assorted writers and artists, including George Lucas on the Star Wars films].” James reported that California high school teachers have responded positively to the lesson plan.”
Thrashteurizer
While the rock opera is resonating with a global teen audience, CMPB didn’t wait until its October premiere to keep White Gold in the youth market consciousness. To sustain the momentum of the ’08 campaign, CMPB and GS&P had White Gold star in his own interactive video game, Thrashteurizer, introduced in April ’09. The game could be downloaded as an application on Facebook or on cell phones (by texting THRASH to 65579).
“A staggering four out of five teens have mobile phones today–and they’re participating in social networking in droves,” said James. “By letting teens experience the health benefits of milk firsthand in an interactive manner, they begin to understand that milk is actually cool for them to drink.”
The object of the game is to accumulate the highest number of “pints” (points) possible using the phone keypad or computer mouse to play. While everyone can play the game, “Thrashteurizer” is specifically targeted to entertain teens. The game also touts the health benefits of milk that White Gold has been singing about: healthy hair, nails, teeth and skin while helping to rebuild muscles and contributing to a better night’s sleep.
The CMPB promoted the game in California schools in a variety of ways to make White Gold and the “wonder tonic’s” health benefits top of mind among teens: “Thrashteurizer” posters in school hallways, White Gold advice columns in school newspapers, as well as television ads on Channel One (a news program for teens broadcast via satellite to middle schools and high schools), were also part of the CMPB’s advertising efforts. Select milk processors in Central and Northern California also featured advertising for the White Gold “Thrashteurizer” game on school milk cartons.
“This is a bold move for the milk processors,” said James at the time the game was rolled out. “They don’t usually feature advertising campaigns on their milk cartons. But because White Gold resonates with young people, introducing the “Thrashteurizer” game to them will hopefully encourage teens to make better food choices that include milk in school.”
To encourage teens to participate, from April 13 to June 21 White Gold rewarded the daily top five scorers with a White Gold “Thrashteurizer” t-shirt. The ultimate top scorer during this time frame won an electric guitar autographed by White Gold, and $500.
“Toma leche?”
“Got milk?” translates into Spanish as “toma leche?” and in ’09 Grupo Gallegos translated the CMPB message to Hispanics via, among other work, two animation commercials of the fable variety directed by Psyop of the bicoastal Psyop studio. “It’s the first time we’ve done animation,” said James. “The spots hit the target in our Hispanic marketing efforts. We have ‘Medusa” touting the benefits of milk for creating strong and healthy hair. And then there’s ‘Sad Princess” which addresses milk as a means to reduce symptoms of PMS.”
The spots have struck a chord, according to James. “They are beautiful to watch. And because there’s less animation on Spanish language television, the commercials stood out. In terms of research, we found that Hispanics respond to animation to a larger degree than the general market.”
But James believes a strong connection between Hispanic and general market advertising has been key to CMPB’s success with Grupo Gallegos.
“Before we hooked up with Grupo Gallegos in 2005, we had a Hispanic campaign that was about the themes family, love and milk. It was heartwarming work but there was a disconnect between the tone of that work and the ‘got milk?’ work we had been doing in the general market since 1994,” observed James. “That disconnect in tonality was something Grupo Gallegos addressed. We started using ‘tomo leche?’ in the same font as ‘got milk?’ We started using humor in our Hispanic market work. There is now a much greater degree of continuity and synchronicity between the general and Hispanic campaigns. Both function on the platform of milk as a super drink, talking about benefits, including those you might not even be aware of. More and more Hispanic consumers are watching both Spanish and English-language media. When fishing in different media streams, it’s ideal for them to see complementary messages and tonality even though the creative is totally different.”
Juan Oubina, group creative director at Grupo Gallegos, explained that it can be a costly mistake to make too great a distinction between U.S. Hispanic and so-called mainstream English-language advertising. Hence the consistency in the milk board campaign.
“You don’t want a schizophrenic brand that has one personality in the English-language market and another in the Hispanic market,” he said. “You have to maintain consistency in brand personality because many Hispanic viewers are watching both English and Spanish-language television. Essentially, we’re one market.”
James noted that CMPB’s agencies are also in a sense “at one.” “What really has made our accomplishments possible is the degree to which our ad agencies work and think together, the degree of collaboration and synchronicity of their efforts, thinking how the timing of one effort is going to affect the effort by another. Goodby, Grupo Gallegos and our PR firm RL Public Relations & Marketing, work as a cohesive integrated team.”
Ultimately James finds gratifying the fact that “people don’t think of us as a brand of milk or a brand of dairy. ‘Got milk’ has become a brand unto itself and we’ve been able to use the halo of that brand–‘got milk?’ and ‘toma leche?’–to boost all milk and dairy. We’ve lent it to national [milk] boards and the marketing reach of the milk brand has become global.”
