Aubrey Plaza is in Bed with Big Milk
Aubrey Plaza is in Bed with Big Milk
Words: Shamim de Brún
Images: Twitter
Aubrey Plaza, must have got some serious coin because, in a commercial resembling the “Got Milk?” campaign, she satirizes alternative milk options by endorsing a fictitious brand called “Wood Milk.” And it is objectively awful.
Produced by the Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP), an ominously innocuous organization that promotes ‘education’ but is, in fact, a marketing agency funded by Big Dairy manufacturers. MilkPEP is the same people who brought the OG “Got Milk?” campaign which ran the world from the 1990s to 2014.
Dressed in a dated hipster ensemble, it’s giving Workmas smoking area circa 2012. It’s as if they’re attempting to take the piss out of Gen Z, but they’re using a Millennial aesthetic. Plaza takes a gulp of the greyish liquid, grinning despite the pulp forming a milk moustache. With a straight face, she asks, “Is Wood Milk an authentic product?” before stating that only OG milk is genuine.
Cue the simultaneous eye roll of the entire internet. The video has since gone viral for all the reasons you would expect, but they probably didn’t. The producers went so hard on this campaign that on top of Plaza’s cameo, they dressed the fictional Wood Milk company up like a startup. Complete with a campaign website, ironic FAQ and Fake Merch featuring uncomfortable phrases such as “Got Wood?” and “It Does a Body Wood.” It’s almost as if they didn’t get that wood is also a double entendre. Or as if they have gone too hard on the irony circled around to idiotic.
They legit set up a Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for their fake baby. The fact that they included Facebook is telling of just how out of touch they actually are. Instead of making Alt Milk look lame and out of touch, it made Big Milk look cringe. It’s embarrassing to put that much effort into an ad to learn that Oat’s still winning.
Poor Aubry maybe wasn’t expecting the collective int to be agast at her most recent spon con, but she took such a hit from it that she had to turn off the comments on her sponsored Instagram post. Twitter feels unilaterally let down for their beloved Aubrey and has let their feelings be known.
She was fighting a losing battle, The New York Times reports that milk has genuinely never appealed to Gen Zers. While this is not universally true, there is a genuine cohort of intergenerational Irish milk drinkers, we can all agree that American milk particularly sucks.
The internet loves a fail, and they will never let Big Milk forget this one. I’m only sorry Aubrey damaged her brand in the process.
Elsewhere on CHAR: Sleepy Chicken
