The tricky part of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners' exquisitely to-the-point "Got Milk?" campaign-which promotes milk without showing a single drop-was keeping the message simple. "At one point, a planner at the agency was pushing to change the line to 'Got enough milk?'" recalls Jeff Goodby, the agency principal who wrote the now-ubiquitous slogan. "Things like that had to be squashed quickly," he jokes.

The 4-year-old campaign for the California Fluid Milk Processor Advisory Board cavalierly ignores the conventional health hype used by other milk marketing, but no one seems to mind. In recent years, other milk groups have licensed the ads and are putting tales of people in desperate need of milk on the national stage. "Each ad has this big drama in which the character's whole world is caving in [because he doesn't have milk], and we follow it with this understated punch line," says Goodby. Simple. And funny. But it didn't start out that way. Initially, the idea was to show how milk was an essential complement to certain foods. But being a little perverse, agency staffers began wondering "what kind of pain would it cause if you were without milk," says Goodby. The humor, they swiftly surmised, was in the pain.

Many of the early ads were crafted by copywriter Harry Cocciolo and art director Sean Ehringer, who have moved on to Leagas Delaney in San Francisco. A favorite is "Heaven," the unhappy saga of an overly ambitious yuppie who dies and thinks he has gone to a divine place filled with cookies and milk, but is horrified to discover all the milk cartons are empty. The spot ends with the tagline in flames, implying he has landed in a far less desirable place.

Another ad, by a different team, shows a wild-haired man surrounded by Alexander Hamilton memorabilia who is scarfing down a peanut-butter sandwich when a radio contest asks an obvious Hamilton question. With no milk to wash down the meal, the frustrated expert repeatedly mumbles an unintelligible answer into the phone.

Aside from the silly exaggerations, the campaign's humor works on another, more subtle level, say agency creatives. By treating a product as ordinary as milk as terribly important, the ads take marketing hype and turn it on its head, a mockery not lost on savvy viewers. Anchoring it all is a "punch line that is so short and so concise it is almost an anti-ad," says Goodby.

Fans of the ads include movie director Steven Spielberg, who asked for his own copy of the "Heaven" spot, and the Girl Scouts of America, which asked if the girls and their cookies could be featured in future ads. (The answer to both: Yes.)

Goodby believes the campaign is proof that consumers gravitate to ads that go beyond mere entertainment and succinctly make a point. "In the real world, people appreciate ads that can do both things at the same time: be amusing and say something."

Joan Voight