Customer Reviews

The Milk Mustache Book: A Behind-The-Scenes Look at America's Favorite Advertising Campaign

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This book features an outstanding album of over 70 celebrity photographs by the wonderful Annie Leibovitz from the famous Milk Mustache campaign. The book also contains an excellent essay about how the campaign was developed and implemented. To me, this is the best book ever on an advertising campaign. I find it vastly superior to the Absolut Book, which was recently released. All author royalties from this book are donated to charity.

In 1994, the health of Americans was in trouble. People had been drinking less and less milk for 30 years. As a result, many women were not getting the calcium they need to maintain bone density. Many people falsely thought that if you removed the fat from milk, all the vitamins and minerals were gone, too. It was decided to create a public education advertising campaign to change those misunderstandings. Within two years, milk consumption was rising again.

The campaign was put together quickly. Bozell Worldwide had about 3 weeks to do the initial development. Many of the ideas were awful . . . like the upside down cow. The top creative people pulled back from having lots of teams working on it, and established some guidelines. They wanted the campaign to feature the educational message, the ads to have a poster feeling, and wanted to get results.

Quickly, the idea of the milk mustache came up. They also realized that it was essential to have amazingly wonderful photographs, and Annie Leibovitz was immediately suggested. But the agency planned to use ordinary people in the ads. The client suggested using celebrities instead. For media, magazines were selected because they were lower cost than television.

The first ad to appear was of Naomi Campbell in a tight "little black dress" that barely contained her. Soon the campaign was aided by tremendous publicity from public reaction to the ads. Of the first 7 ads, the one of Billy Ray Cyrus was voted most popular.

Each add has only four lines of copy, and these captions are included. I liked the copy because it was candid. It talked about the fact that many of these people were pretty healthy and attractive before milk. But they are all milk drinkers. Whoopi Goldberg had offered to appear, but was turned down when it turned out that she is lactose intolerant.

So how did they get that mustache to stay there? At first, it was just milk, but that didn't give the right look. So they mixed milk and vanilla ice cream, and painted on the mustaches. That's why the lips are still covered with lipstick and lip gloss.

In the first year, the theme was "Milk. What a Surprise." In the second year, the theme was "Milk. Where's Your Mustache?"

The book is organized in chronological order of shooting of the photographs. On the left side page is a description of the events around the shooting and what was going on in the celebrity's life then. For example, Joan Lunden was just finishing a divorce. On the right hand page, you get the advertisement. At the end of the book, you get some of the spoofs.

Not all of the advertisements are included, but almost all are. Most of those appearing are athletes, actresses, actors, models, and rock stars. That was an obvious attempt to make milk seem more "in." Clearly, that worked because hundreds of celebrities tried unsuccessfully to be included in the campaign, even though it "only" paid a "pittance" ($25,000 seems like a goodly sum to me for less than day's work, but what do I know?).

You will have your own favorites, but I especially enjoyed the one of a filthy Steve Young in his football jersey. Naturally, anyone would enjoy looking at the many beautiful women looking very fetching and healthy-looking men seeming to be very confident.

After you finish enjoying this book, I suggest that you check with those you know to see what they do to get enough calcium. Also, for those who are lactose intolerant, many supermarkets now offer almost totally lactose-free milk. My doctor tells me to stick to skim because I need to reduce fat intake. Perhaps you should ask your doctor,too. Realize that 2 percent fat milk has only taken out 20 percent of the fat.

Skoal! Here's to your good health!

The Milk Mustache ad campaign is arguably the most popular in American history and although I don't see them in magazines as ads in Australia, they're often made into posters as consolation!! :)

This book features all of the great milk ads produced as well as background info on the person, just so you're not going "what? who the hell is that?!". It features info on why and how the campaign was started, how exactly they do those mustaches and interesting little snippets on the dramas on the photo shoots. All this, as well as full page, colour photos of the milk ads.

The only con is that this book was made a while ago and so a lot of the more recent ads are missing, but this books is still worth buying for any interested fan!!

Bring on the next book!!

If you want to see pictures of the early milk mustaches, this book is for you. If you want to learn anything of substance about the campaign, this book is NOT for you. The written introduction and copy throughout the book have a very "dumbed down" tone and are sickeningly self-promoting. Look elsewhere for real information about the campaign.

This book is great! It has tons of info and facts about the campaign started and about the photo shoots of the celebrities! It's great for anyone who collects milk ads! Visit my site at www.milkads.com!

I collect milk mustache ads, and was so happy when they came out with the book! Its a cool book, but many ads were missing. At least 3 common ads were missing, and a bunch of contest winners, and even some popular spoofs. If the sequel includes these others, it will be complete! Otherwise, buy it today! VISIT MY MILK MUSTACHE SITE!! http://www.fly.to/milkadheaven/

This book is the best book ever!! I personally collect milk posters and i dont have any of them...lol. But I enjoyed it alot. I have 2 of them now. I tear(sp) all the posters out of one and keep the other book...I need more though!! Hope all you peeps that buy it enjoy it.. I certainly did!

A great coffee table book or a good example of advertising at its best, this book is very interesting and fun, and includes many famous people. It even has parodies on the "Got Milk?" campaign. However, since it was published in 1998, the more recent ads are not included.

The photographic display contained in this volume is positively euphoric. Some may say you can get the exact same results from a blindfolded five dollar streetwalker, but how many times does the girl on the corner look like Spike Lee? I didn't think so.

Did you know there are people who are paid to place that milk-like substance on celebrities? It's a shame I didn't have this tidbitty apple slice from the tree of knowledge seven years ago for I could have saved myself some money in wasted secondary education.

But the true lesson I learned from this compilation is that yes, it is possible to publish a book without contributing even a single thing to great genre of literature. Kudos to you, Jay Schulberg and the dairy ad board!

I just got the book and I think it is great. It tells the day that each ad was photographed, funny things that happened on the set and some photos that didn't make the cut. The book also shows you some spoofs that were made about the campain. You must get this book!!

This book is a great book for anyone who collects Milk ads. It has alot of common one + alot of ones I have never seen. It also has great facts about Milk ads. I think anyone would like this book!!!!