Chocolate milk makers now target grown-up athletes
— -- Turns out chocolate milk makers might not need school kids after all.
Not when they have millions of adult athletes ready to scarf down the sugary stuff.
Today, the national milk organization behind the powerful milk mustache and Got Milk?? ad campaigns, will announce plans to literally wipe the milk mustache out of its chocolate milk ads and begin targeting the flavored dairy product at what might appear to be a most unlikely audience: grown-up jocks.
The move comes at a time school districts from Los Angeles to the District of Columbia have eliminated chocolate milk from schools. As a result, consumption has dropped four of the past five years. Still, the $2.5 billion flavored-milk category was the only milk sector to grow.
The milk folks must be serious. This is the first time in 17 years that the Milk Processor Education Program hasn't used its milk mustache image in an ad. The new tag line for chocolate milk: My After.
"Chocolate milk has what athletes need to recover after a tough workout," says Julia Kadison, VP of marketing at the dairy group. An industry-funded study from three universities published in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise says that recreational runners who drank fat-free chocolate milk after a strenuous run ran 23% longer when exercising later vs. those who drank carbohydrate-only sports drinks.
Not everyone buys the findings. "As the pressure on schools has grown to get chocolate milk out, they're looking for any new marketing," says Marion Nestle, nutrition professor at New York University. "I'd never recommend drinking a sweetened drink. People shouldn't drink their calories."
But Brian Zehetner, chief science officer for Anytime Fitness, a fitness franchise with no connections to the milk industry, says drinking chocolate milk to help the body recover after a strenuous workout "is actually a good idea. I recommend chocolate milk to athletes I work with."
The milk folks are taking this concept and running with it. Ads make their debut next week featuring basketball star Carmelo Anthony and Olympic swimmer Dara Torres singing the praises of chocolate milk.
But nutritionist Nestle suggests something else after a tough workout: "Eat a sandwich."
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