Got Milk? On Cows and Bitches.

The California Milk Processor Board and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners have created a new ad campaign to get "somebody" to drink more milk because, they say, it helps with PMS. I put the word "somebody" in quotes because those quotes are the gist of this post.

But first let's back-track a bit: Here is what Adweek wrote about the campaign:

Today's deep, patient sigh goes out to the California Milk Processor Board and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for their new "Got milk?" campaign positioning milk as a cure-all for the grab bag of unpleasantness known as PMS. They tried this once before, in 2005. The new campaign is called "Everything I Do Is Wrong," and with headlines like "We can BOTH blame myself" and "I apologize for letting you misinterpret what I was saying," it presents women as more uncontrollably irrational than ever before! The print ads send you to a Flash-heavy microsite (how quaint!) that tracks the global PMS level and helps men create apology videos with big-eyed flying kittens.

Examples of the ads:

The idea is that milk will help with PMS and make men's lives easier. More on the scientific basis for that milk-PMS connection can be found at the MS Blog:

The California Milk Processor Board’s latest campaign is meant to raise awareness of milk’s health benefits in reducing the symptoms of PMS. The campaign is not targeted at women, though, but at dudes.

...

Connie Bohon, an ob-gyn in Washington, D.C., calls the link between milk and PMS “soft,” telling the Washington Post, “There are some beliefs that calcium can improve PMS symptoms [but] I don’t know that it’s universally accepted.” The belief is based on a 1998 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology–a study sponsored by SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, makers of calcium-supplying TUMS–which found that women who took 1,500 milligrams of calcium via supplements experienced nearly a 50-percent reduction in PMS symptoms. Still, there’s no clear evidence that this would work the same with calcium-rich foods like milk.

Because the campaign is being positioned partly as a public service announcement, it straddles the line between commercial marketing (the profit motive) and social marketing (the do-good motive). In this case, the Milk Board appears to want to improve women’s health, but ultimately, commercial profit is their bottom line. It’s frustrating enough when advertisements capitalize on anti-feminist messages, but it’s absolutely maddening to see commercial marketing masked as social marketing and using the same anti-women tactics.

Got it? It's a fascinating tangle of stuff: PMS jokes, henpecked men, health benefits, obvious traps for feminazis to step in with their mustachioed angry faces (can't you get a joke? PMS bothering you?).

That's why it's useful to go back to my initial question, the one about the "somebody" in the campaign who is supposed to drink more milk and how that is going to be achieved.

That "somebody" is a woman with PMS. But the ads are not aimed at her, and the benefits the ads tout are not about the possible connection with calcium and reduced discomfort before menstruation. Nope. The benefits are to henpecked men! So the "somebody" the ad is aimed at is a man, although he is not urged to drink more milk. Rather, he is urged to urge her to drink more milk so that he can get a more peaceful life with less henpecking. Women will be more logical while on milk!

It's a win-win.