Dogmatic in doing what is mine.

２．Where’s Your Mustache? (milk) Are these two men familiar? While they may look funny, this is a serious advertisement. The U.S. President wouldn’t appear in ad unless it was for a good reason. There are two good reasons in this case: To promote milk drinking and voting among American citizens. They both help build a healthy nation.  The milk mustache is one of America’s favorite advertisement campaigns. It puts a milk mustache on film stars, models, TV personalities, and other famous people. Why did it become so popular?  “Finish your milk!” Millions of Americans have heard this phrase at the dinner table, generation after generation. Since the end of the 1960s, however, it was heard less often. Drinking milk fell out of fashion. One of the reasons was the negative publicity products. Weight-conscious Americans started to shy away from products that contained fat, including milk. Milk also lost favor to juice, soda, and mineral water. Drinking milk was not cool.  In 1994, U.S. milk processors felt it was important to send a health message to the American public. Congress and the Secretary of Agriculture agreed. They needed an educational campaign to effectively communicate the importance of milk for healthy living. But, how do you get people to change their attitude towards drinking milk? How do you make milk cool? If they said milk is good for you, people would think, “My mother tried that one already. No thanks.” They had to tell people something new and meaningful. Most people believed that when the fat is taken out of milk, all the vitamins and minerals went with it. The public had to be told that fat-free and low-fat milk were nutritionally just as good as whole milk. So, U.S. milk processors came up with the theme, “Milk. What a surprise!” The American public gave it the title: the milk mustache campaign. It is an informercial campaign which is not boring or lecturing. It is simple, arresting, charming, and fun. The familiar faces take you by surprise and make you smile. The milk mustache became an icon of the 1990s and part of American popular culture. Milk became cool.  Unlike celebrities in Japan, celebrities in the U.S. normally turn down requests to appear in advertisements, because they think it is degrading. (Some of them, however, seem to have a different standard when it comes to appearing in ads in Japan.) In the U.S., celebrities are effective in marketing a few select products, or in launching social or political campaigns.  For the milk mustache promotion, celebrities were not only happy to appear, some were eager to be part of the campaign. In fact, they went so far as to send photographs of themselves with milk mustaches to the advertiser. Over the years, the advertiser had more people who wanted to be in the campaign than they had space, because everyone loved the sense of humor. And they wanted to do it for a greater good: Getting a healthy message to the American public. Money was not what these celebrities were after. In fact, many donated the fee they received to charity. Americans started to collect ads with their favorite celebrity mustaches. The two photos are of important American political figures: former President Clinton and Senator Dole, sporting milk mustaches and big smiles. Can you see the “little boy” in these grown men? This ad appeared in USA Today and Newsweek the day before the 1996 presidential election. Only one line of copy appeared: “Vote. Strengthen America’s Backbone.” This ad had not been approved by the President or the Senator before it was printed. However, the President, though taken by surprise, did not object. He issued a statement saying he supported its purpose, voting. Senator Dole issued a similar statement. But they knew perfectly that the bottom line of this ad was to promote milk.  A sense of humor is considered necessary for successful political leaders in the U.S. Nationally, Clinton and Dole were aware of that. The milk mustache reduced them to approachable faces that people could relate to. It reminded the public of what they were like as young boys.  The next time you drink milk, why not look at your milk mustache and see yourself as a kid again! １　After 1994, it was difficult to get people to appear in milk advertisements. ２  Drinking milk has not always been popular among Americans. ３　Clinton and Dole were upset about this ad.