got got?

It’s hard to believe that the “got milk?” ad campaign is SIXTEEN years old.  It’s even harder to believe that the rip-offs are still going strong.

Here’s a tiny bit of history:

“Got Milk? is an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of cow’s milk, which was created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993 and later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. It has been running since October 1993. The campaign has been credited with greatly increasing milk sales nationwide after a 20-year slump.”

- wikipedia

In June 1993, I was working at a design firm in San Francisco – a block away from Goodby, Berlin and Silverstein (their name, then).  GBS was the hot ad agency.  It was the hip boutique shop where everyone wanted to work – me included.  (I interviewed there once.)  Each campaign that came out of the place was more innovative, more clever and more fun than the last.  The “got milk?” campaign was one of those campaigns.  I loved it, at first – but not for long.  Sadly, it’s novelty and charm wore off pretty quickly as the public glommed on, made it their own and milked it (pun intended) to death.

Sixteen years later its rip-offs are still everywhere.  People continue to milk “got milk.”  I’m guessing that when they use this slogan for their purposes, they think they’re being cute, original and clever.  I find them to be, well, not so much.  It’s not clever anymore people.  In fact, it hasn’t been clever for about fifteen years.

Despite the exhaustive use of the slogan, however, it doesn’t seem like the magic little word “got” followed by (your clever idea here) and a “?” is going anywhere soon.  A majority of these photos were taken in my small town over the course of only 3 weeks.  Send me snapshots from your town!  I’m a woman on a mission.

And now my mission, Milking Got Milk, is it’s own dedicated site.  Check it @ milkinggotmilk.com

Got got?

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