Manning Pens 'Got Milk?' Book

Client Chief Takes a Fond Look Back at Campaign's 6-Year History LOS ANGELES--Jeff Manning is usually the one demanding revisions, not delivering them, but found the tables turned as he slaved away on Got Milk? The Book. "When I got the first draft back, the comment on the first chapter read, 'This is not a chapter,'" he recalled. "It was hard. I'd worked on it for weeks." The executive director of the California Milk Processor Board ended up having to cut almost 20,000 words from his original manuscript, but managed to accommodate the frustrations of his newfound vocation. "I'd never written a book before, so I usually deferred [decisions] to the publisher," Manning said of the book's six-month development. Now finished, and due out in time for the holidays, the 200-page coffee-table gift book traces the history of "Got milk?" chronologically, from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners' 1993 pitch for the account to the current "Y2Kud" TV spot. Peppered with anecdotes and asides, stills and scripts, it's aimed squarely at general readers, explaining with minimal business jargon how a fairly risky strategy--selling a product by focusing on its absence--engendered a well-loved advertising campaign. Manning's approach is lighthearted and conversational--the book begins, "Isolation. Desperation. Torture. What strange origins for an advertising campaign"--and yet he often seems mildly in awe of the monster he and his agency created. The narrative, exploring various paths, visits the early work and those who created it ("young, urban, hip people with hyperactive imaginations and no kids"); how the tag was born (an "almost offhanded remark" from Jeff Goodby); why certain ads became hits while others never got off the ground ("Castle," featuring a medieval army lobbing cookie missiles at a besieged enemy, was a favorite of Goodby creatives, but Manning rejected it half a dozen times); and why the campaign's evolution led to Drysville and not Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean. "It's not meant to be a marketing book," Manning said. "I hope it's an entertaining read." The idea for the book wasn't Manning's, but did come out of one of the myriad "Got milk?" licensing deals he struck. Prima Publishing of Rocklin, Calif., originally wanted to use the "Got milk?" name on a cookie recipe book, but when that fell through, urged Manning to write a history of the campaign instead. To retrace the early days, he looked over records of briefs, break dates and production and research schedules. The CMPB gave him the green light to write during work hours, and then it was just a matter of hammering the chapters out. Manning admitted he should have done a more detailed outline before he started. The extensive revisions, he said, were "probably the worst part of the experience." Still, he said he is pleased with the result--or as pleased as he can be, considering it's part of his job to never be fully satisfied. While the book is a kind of memoir, Manning said it by no means signals the end of the road for "Got milk?" "The fact that you can write a book about it does mean it's become mainstream," he said. "But I hope in five years' time the work we will have done by then will justify another book." Pausing, he added: "Not that I'll be the one to write it.

Brand Marketing

Manning Pens 'Got Milk?' Book

Tim Nudd

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Tim Nudd