Got Milk ads don’t work
I had a little discussion with someone at my new job a few days ago. We were talking about how “obviously successful” the Got Milk ads have been. I recalled mention that they generated a lot of recognition but not so much in the get-people-to-drink-milk category. I did some homework and was amazed to find out how true that is.
It would appear that the $20 million+ per year Got Milk ad campaign has pretty solidly failed. It is called the “Milkpep” program and it started in 1995. Take a look at the chart to the right to see how effective the program has been. There was a blip the year after the program started but per-capita and total sales of fluid milk have continued to fall pretty much continuously since it’s inception. Notably, the rate of change of per-capita consumption hasn’t changed. In other words, it’s very hard for them to say “Well, people would have been drinking even less milk if it weren’t for the ads.”
I found this information in the Dairy Facts Book 2006, put out by the International Dairy Foods Association. (local copy)