Marketing and all things related

Whenever we teach marketing, we delight in revealing to students that their favorite celebrity “Got Milk” milk mustache campaign is 1) paid for with their tax dollar and 2) has not increased milk sales for 20 years. We love farmers, ranchers, and dairymen as much as the next pundit, but we do not like government subsidies, and believe the invisible hand, should determine milk prices. So we are not thrilled to learn that International Dairy Foods Association is launching a new “Body by Milk” campaign to target teens in 45,000 middle and high schools. Yes, the campaign includes cool auction merchandise from Adidas, Fender, Roland, Epic and Baby Phat intended to raise money for school equipment. And yes there is this hip Body by Milk website with totally unconvincing reasons you need to drink milk to be cool and healthy. At the end of the day, these teens 1) know the whole deal is a hoax by the man and 2) not drink any more milk than they ever have—which is almost zero. We wished we had not learned about this from Promo Magazine.