Coca-Cola's milk splash miss: Pin-up posters were great!

Sandy Douglas, president, Coca-Cola North America announced last month that the Fairlife premium milk range would be rolled out across the US after road-tests in Minneapolis and Denver produced "amazing"​ results.

Immediate reaction to Coca-Cola's US dairy venture was positive - consumers were without doubt intrigued.

But within days, attention turned to to Fairlife's Milky Pin-Ups poster campaign.

Carrying health-related slogans such as ‘Better milk looks good on you’​ and ‘More good looks good’​, the posters, put bluntly, feature naked women covered in dripping milk. 

Now, before you spray your screen with whatever it is you're drinking be aware that after much backlash Fairlife has decided to retire the Milky Pin-Ups campaign.

LOTS buzzing around this week about our new #fairlife#milk! To clear up a couple things on the launch, go to http://t.co/FtPTB14eTv thx!

— fairlife (@fairlife) December 1, 2014

“…some people loved the pin-up campaign, and others didn’t,”​ a message on the Fairlife website reads.

It said that while the ads were "eye-catching" ​(no doubt there) it will be "taking a totally new approach"​ in future.

At risk of sounding like a oddball with an unusually high interest in milk (half correct), I think Fairlife's Milky Pin-Ups were great. 

With a mix of male and female Milky Pin-Ups, Fairlife may have avoided such backlash.

But it seemingly achieved what it sought to with those milk-doused models - it distanced its premium milk from the regular milk that sells for half the price in US retail stores.

Fairlife isn't ordinary milk.

A "proprietary milk filtering process​" is employed to separate milk into its five key components – water, butterfat, protein, vitamins and minerals, and lactose.

These components are then recombined in different proportions to produce lactose-free milk with 50% more protein and calcium and 30% less sugar than regular milk.

Believing its proposition would be a "game changer"​ in the US milk category, Fairlife decided its "unique milk deserved an equally unique marketing campaign."​

So it adopted images produced by London-based photographer, Jaroslav Wieczorkiewicz. 

With his Milky Pin-Ups collection, Wieczorkiewicz sought to recreate the 1950s pin-up art of American artists like Gil Elvgren. 

On some platforms, Milky Pin Ups is regarded as art. 

When used to advertise milk, the images are instead viewed as sexist and offensive.

It was without doubt an odd choice of image, but we live in an age where for years sex has been used to sell alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.

Fairlife isn't just milk; it's a beverage with a premium price. Perhaps it needs to be advertised accordingly. 

Whatever your opinion on Fairlife’s Milky Pin-Ups, I am sure we can all agree that Fairlife has separated itself from the pack.