"Got Milk?" gets offensive [View All]

[seabeyond]

The California Milk Processor Board has come up with some of the most popular and trendsetting advertising of the last 20 years, i.e. “Got Milk?” and “Milk does a body good.”

But recently the board has started publicizing a new ad campaign that promotes sexist stereotypes about women. The premise of the new “Got Milk?” campaign is that men should buy milk for their girlfriends and wives because it helps reduce the symptoms of PMS -- a medically tenuous claim. The ads make women look irrational and crazy.
Urge the California Milk Processor Board to drop their unacceptable new “Got Milk?” ad campaign.

Each ad features a disheveled, confused man holding cartons of milk. The captions are lines like “I apologize for not reading between the right lines” and “We can both blame myself.”

The web site associated with the ad campaign offers a “vocabulary sensitizer,” tracks the “current global PMS level,” and lets men make sarcastic “apology” videos for things they “did and didn’t do.”

Marketing magazine AdWeek even covered the ads in an article titled “Got PMS? Have a Glass of Milk, You Crazy Bitch.”

If these ads stand, they’ll send a high-profile message that advertising based on sexist and offensive stereotypes is acceptable and gets rewarded.
So far, the chairman of the California Milk Processor Board, Steve James, has dismissed criticisms. He responded snidely, claiming that these ads are "like a public service, providing tools and abilities to talk about" PMS.

Widespread public outcry can push the board to pull the ads -- just as it did in 2005 when the board first tried to float a similar PMS-centric campaign. It’s time to let the California Milk Processor Board know their new “Got Milk?” campaign’s got a problem.

Sign here to let the board know that sexist ads are bad for business: http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-got-milk-to-end-its-sexist-pms-ad-campaign

Thanks for taking action,

- Shelby and the Change.org team