In February, Silk released a campaign that made dairy farmers and milk lovers across America side-eye the popular plant-based beverage company. In promoting its new oat-based milk blend alternative, Nextmilk, the campaign features the “nepo babies” of celebrities who starred in the original got milk? ads — now sporting the iconic beverage mustaches that their parents made famous in the 1990s. Only this time, of course, the mustaches were made of Nextmilk rather than real milk.
So was this crusade to mock the dairy industry the best way to market their product?
Silk’s #WhosNext campaign is centered around Nextmilk claiming to contain 25 percent to 30 percent fewer calories compared with dairy milk, 75 percent less sugar, and a taste and texture identical to real milk. But here’s the kicker: even Silk knows that this new product isn’t nutritionally comparable to real milk. How do we know? Because they disclose that fact right there in fine print on the new ads!
While the reduced sugar may be good news to those with lactose-sensitive stomachs, the nutritional value of processed cane sugars added in a factory cannot be accurately compared to the naturally occurring sugars found in real cow milk. The brand also brags that the product contains “six key nutrients found in dairy,” when real dairy supplies 13 essential nutrients to sustain healthy bones and skin, maintain a strong immune system and regulate metabolism.
According to the ingredients listed on Silk’s website, Nextmilk contains oat concentrate, coconut cream and oil, soy protein isolate, cane sugar, along with a myriad of stabilizers and emulsifiers like gellan gum and sunflower lecithin. Despite these nutritional deficits, Silk markets this product as a “better milk,” focusing their brand strategy on slandering the real deal rather than promoting what this product can bring to the table for their target audience.
The faces of this new drink thus far include Brooklyn Peltz Beckham, Ella Bleu Travolta, Sailor Brinkley Cook, and Myles O’Neal, who are the children of David and Victoria Beckham, John Travolta and Kelly Preston, Christie Brinkley, and Shaquille O’Neal, respectively. The plant-based milk brand purposefully used the children of the former “got milk?” ambassadors to represent the “next generation” of millennial and Gen Z consumers that they allege seek more plant-based alternatives than their parents’ generation.
By releasing ad designs identical to the posters that have been plastered on cafeteria walls since the “got milk?” tagline was printed, Silk has made a bold move against the dairy industry.
Unfortunately, this kind of defamatory campaign is nothing new. Meat and milk alternatives have made a habit of mimicking language and imagery commonly used by the animal agriculture community in an attempt to completely remove and replace animal products from consumers’ plates. Laws have even been passed over the years to keep alternatives from using meat or dairy terms on their packaging labels.
In reality, these plant-based brands are only pushing themselves further from the shopping cart by positioning themselves as substitutes rather than a unique product. In other words, why buy the off brand when the original is often more nutrition-packed, is cheaper, and is minimally processed?
In summary, here is a short video I did on my philosophy when it comes to food marketing. If you have to put down other products to get ahead, you should maybe be questioning the quality of your own product instead. Food brands should be able to talk on their own two feet about what makes their product different and unique without slandering the competition.
Instead, Silk should have taken this opportunity to highlight their oat farmers and support the community of producers that make their beverages possible. As I clicked through the Silk website, I couldn’t find a single picture of an almond, oat, or soybean farmer that would show the brand acknowledging the families at the core of their plant-based products. At the end of the day, farmers want to tell their stories and feel supported by the brands and retailers that purchase their crop. Shoppers just want to feel connected to their food and see transparency in how a product got from the farm to their tables.
Would promoting them have been harder than hiring high-profile celebrities to mimic a campaign that was replicated to criticize dairy? I sometimes wonder … is marketing stuff like this even legal? Regardless of whether the farm is big, small, organic, conventional, or non-GMO, all farmers produce safe, quality food to their communities and therefore deserve to be supported and recognized by the brands that profit from their hard work.
Supporting farmers of all shapes and sizes is important whether they’re plant- or animal-based. But ripping off dairy campaigns, spreading negativity against animal ag, and labeling themselves as “non GMO” are just three reasons why Silk’s Nextmilk will never end up in my shopping cart.
Michelle Miller, the “Farm Babe,” is an internationally recognized keynote speaker, writer, and social media influencer and travels full time to advocate for agriculture. She comes from an Iowa-based row crop and livestock farming background and now resides on a timber farm in North Central Florida.
