penny for a thought | Patrick on every & anything

Strung-out by their long running “Got Milk?” campaign, Milk, with help from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, launched a “made for web,” digital campaign built around a fictional rocker, White Gold. One part moderately creepy human and one part mystic moon goddess, White Gold is sure to please; whether or not he’ll persuade you to consume more/any milk is beyond me. Very funny and entertaining nonetheless.

Milk’s “White Gold is White Gold” campaign is, in fact, achieving its viral goal, but I’m forced to question the actual usefulness of the campaign. I mean, sure, White Gold’s videos are well produced and supported by a flashy website–which In my opinion is not very user friendly–but where’s the call to action? What’s the goal?

Is White Gold meant to simply build brand recognition/equity? He does, pretty well… Or, should White Gold be a bit more of a universal advocate for Milk, reiterating Milk’s health benefits in a way which gets consumers involved? Now we’re talking interactivity!! Call me the Devil’s advocate, but I just feel like a genius campaign is missing a little something that would’ve made all the difference. Instead of a pretty, but complex, website with only a “send to a friend” function, I’d like to see something a little more community oriented, user generated content (video and/or social networking) perhaps.

That’s my $0.02, check it out for yourself.