So who came up with the “got milk” mustache campaign anyway?
Meet Jay Schulberg, 59. Schulberg once wanted to be a screenwriter. Now he is making a splash with his magazine ads.
Schulberg has written ads for American Express, Huggies, Maxwell House and Hershey’s. For the last four years, he has been creating milk mustache ads for the National Fluid Milk Processors.
The first ad featured supermodel Naomi Campbell. Schulberg told KidNews he was amazed at how fast it became a worldwide hit. He learned that “regardless of how beautiful you are, or how famous you are, everyone relates to a milk mustache.”
But is the sticky mustache in the ads really made from milk? Schulberg said it’s a combo of milk, vanilla ice cream and sometimes a dab of yogurt. It takes 30 to 60 minutes to photograph the model, but four to five hours to put on the mustache and makeup and construct the set.
The more than 70 celebs who have appeared in the ads got picked based on “who is an attention getter,” Schulberg said. Would Schulberg ever use, say, the Backstreet Boys? “Yes, if it’s teens that we’re aiming at.”
Why a milk campaign? “There was a huge decline of milk sales over the past 30 years,” Schulberg said. “People thought that soda pop was hip and cool, and not as fatty as milk. Well, that’s what we had to change!”
Still, milk consumption has remained steady over the last five years, according to Jim Miller of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 1997, Americans consumed 55.4 billion pounds of fluid milk. That’s down from the 55.7 billion pounds they consumed in 1992, but up from 55.0 million in 1993.
So Schulberg has a tip: “Drink your milk!”
The challenge: Creating our own great mustache for Dan. Who needs milk when you have cheese spray and fluffy marsmallow stuff?
