I just saw an article in my local newspaper that talked about cities in California being paid to rename their towns “Got Milk?” This seems pretty extreme. Are the dairy folks getting desperate? Are their sales declining so that they have to resort to such bizarre measures to push their products? And who would want to live in a city called “Got Milk?”
Mary Jane
Dear Mary Jane,
It’s true. There’s been a 21 percent drop in per capita milk consumption in the U.S. in the last few decades. Trying to do something about declining milk sales in the nation’s leading dairy state, the California Milk Processor Board is hoping to offer enough cash to lure the people in charge of one of California’s tiny towns into changing the town’s name to “Got Milk? California.” The Board promises that any town that changes its name to “Got Milk? California” will become the centerpiece for a national publicity campaign “celebrating 10 years of ‘Got Milk?’ advertising.”
“What I want,” says the milk board’s Berkeley-based director Jeff Manning, “is to be so happy to pick up a newly printed California map and run my finger down a road and see Got Milk? California.”
High school students in the towns under consideration, though, aren’t overjoyed with the idea. One such town is Biggs (population 1,793). “We’ll get made fun of all the time,” complains Biggs High School student Laura Rodriguez, who apparently doesn’t relish the idea of the town being made into an ongoing commercial for the dairy industry. “Where you from? We’re from Got Milk?” she explains. “They’ll say, ‘Here comes the cows.’”
