Monday, January 14

 
Questionable Milk Marketing Tactic No. 1: La Llorona Will Get You If You Don't Drink Milk

Now I have to admit to a bias here first off: I live in Wisconsin, whose nickname is "America's Dairyland," and I often chuckle at the things the California dairy industry does to promote consumption. The latest, for me, is a real head-scratcher. It has just kicked off a campaign to promote milk drinking among teens by using an old Latin American folk tale about a ghost of a woman who roams the earth looking for the two children she killed after her husband left her. If you don't drink milk, goes the commercial designed by four Latino students at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, La Llorona will come after you. I don't quite get the connection, but the commercial apparently has La Llorona weeping as she sees the empty milk container in the fridge (which is, granted, a typical teen-age trick). I didn't grow up with the La Llorona myth, and I'm not Hispanic, so perhaps I'm not the best judge here, but my feelings echo those of Gabriela Lemus of the League or United Latin American Citizens who told the LA Times: "– I don't know if I'd buy milk from someone who was trying to kill me." This story is from the UK-based just-food.com
posted by Unknown 1:48 PM