Who knew milk could be so controversial?

Recently, the California Milk Processor Board, the media-saavy Milk Board also behind the famous "Got Milk?" campaign, released a new milk promotional campaign focused on PMS. Apparently, milk can relieve the symptoms of PMS, which is news to me. Their plan to roll out this information to the public was quite obviously designed to go viral. Instead of appealing to women looking to alleviate PMS, they went with a funny ("funny") campaign that focused on men suffering from women's PMS. An example: "I apologize for not reading between the right lines." It certainly got attention! After a few days, rage spread across the internet, and funnyordie.com made a parody video about it.

Leaving out my personal opinion about whether or not I think the campaign is funny - although I can say that I will not be using or recommending milk as a treatment for PMS - it certainly got everyone thinking about milk. But more importantly, they seem to have found a way to deal with the controversy in a way that still benefits them, in contrast to other companies with controversial ad campaigns such as Groupon or the Motrin ad we saw in class. The website for their campaign now redirects to a website where people can talk about the ads and have a reasoned discussion. I haven't looked into the website in great deal and I don't know how many people will want to have a reasoned discussion about milk and PMS, but if moderated and formatted well, it has the potential to defuse the situation while still promoting their product. In fact, it almost seems like this was their intention. Depending on how accidentally-offensive a social media campaign is, this strategy may or may not work, but it's worth keeping in the toolkit!