READ MORE FROM OUR “MILK” FEATURE HERE.
1940
As part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, the Works Progress Administration employs millions of job seekers – including artists – after the Great Depression. This poster promoted milk for the Cleveland Division of Health, as part of the program.
1962
The American Dairy Association sponsors the popular sitcom “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” The cast was featured in milk commercials to accompany the episodes.
Tell us who you’d pick to be a Betty this year!
1980s
National Dairy and Research Board produces “Milk, it does a body good” television commercials.
1995-2014
“You couldn’t open a magazine without seeing a milk ad,” says Bernie Hogya, who art directed and supervised nearly every ad in the milk mustache campaign’s nearly 20 years. Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP), the board behind the mustache ads, later licensed the California Milk Processor Board’s “Got Milk?” slogan, merging the two into one of the most well-known ad campaigns in history.
Stache Facts
🥛 The milk for the milk mustaches is made of milk, cream cheese and ice cream, according to Hogya.
🥛 Photographer Annie Leibovitz had each celebrity drink on their milk mustaches. “Everybody took a cup, and they put it up to their lip and put the cup down. And we photographed. So everybody, as [Leibovitz] said, had their own fingerprint, their own mustache,” Hogya says.
🥛 The stars have to be users of dairy milk to be in the ads – it’s even in their contracts, according to Miranda Abney, senior director of marketing at MilkPEP. “It really helps to work or partner with someone or an entity that is milk-friendly,” she says.
2020
MilkPEP relaunches “Got Milk?” for the digital generation, with a TikTok of Olympic gold medalist Katie Ledecky swimming with a glass of milk on her head. “It’s just like the asset that keeps on giving,” says Abney. “Katie Ledecky is such an icon.”
2023
Aubrey Plaza stars in a parody commercial for Wood Milk, poking fun at alternative milks. The spot draws some backlash for its mockery of the plant-based products.
“We definitely saw it was a bit polarizing,” says Abney. MilkPEP responds with OK2MILK, a joking PSA starring Queen Latifah that called out “milk shaming.”
