By Randi Altman

Giving a classic and beloved ad campaign a new look and sound is not for the faint of heart, but music, sound design and mix studio Shindig was up for the challenge. When agency Weber Shandwick called on them to help create a new soundtrack for the newly revitalized classic, they delivered a hip-hop track that speaks to the social media generation.

The campaign, which can be seen on broadcast TV, digital and social platforms, features content submitted on different social platforms that show “fun and unexpected ways” people are enjoying milk. The music was also used for the #GotMilkChallenge, which asks Gen Z-ers to:

Step 1: Pour a glass of milk.
Step 2: Do something amazing — and don’t spill!
Step 3: Sip to prove you still “got milk.”

Olympic swimmer Katie Ledecky set the tone for the campaign and swam a lap with a glass of chocolate milk on her head. The #GotMilkChallenge hashtag now has over 3.6 billion views on TikTok. Some of the submitted videos include a guy opening a plastic milk container and pouring a glass with his toes, another of a guy pouring two bottles of milk on himself while another jumps into a kiddie pool/giant bowl of cereal.

Scott Glenn

Shindig and Weber Shandwick worked closely while creating the music and lyrics for the 30-second broadcast spot. They were then asked to customize several additional 15-second iterations of the song, giving each spot its own instrumental and lyrical spin, and tailoring the track for different themes, such as sports or gaming.

A frequent Shindig collaborator, rapper and influencer Chief Wakil, provided the vocals. The studio’s creative director Scott Glenn and staff composer Austin Shupe worked directly with the artist.

We recently reached out to Glenn to find out more about the campaign and collaborating so closely with the agency.

How early did Shindig get involved?
Weber Shandwick already had the concept, but it was early enough that we could really collaborate on the best way to execute. Though things moved quickly, the project evolved in a very positive way over the course of several weeks.

What kind of sound was the agency looking to get, and how did you work together to settle on the final?
The agency knew they were looking for hip-hop with lyrics. We have worked with Chief Wakil on several other projects and consider him part of the Shindig inner circle. Once we submitted the initial 30-second demo, things started to fall in place, and we all knew we had something great on our hands.

Did the fact it was going to have a big social media component affect what it might sound like?
The social media component didn’t affect things all that much in this case. The 30 second had enough general milk subject matter to lend itself well to the Katie Ledecky Tik-Tok challenge and once that dropped, things really took off.

Any pressure felt by working on a rebrand of an iconic campaign?
We have worked on many high-profile and award-winning projects and pride ourselves on being able to execute in a compelling way against any creative brief. Once we did the initial agency call, we hoped they’d choose to work with us because we knew we would kill at this. In the end, everyone delivered from the top, down.

Shingdig’s process

OK, so once it was decided what it would sound like, what was Shindig’s process?
The process is probably the best part of the back story because there was a tremendous amount of trust and collaboration. The agency initially approached us with scripts for the rapping, and while they incorporated some great ideas, the cadences and rhyme patterns didn’t lend particularly well to sounding authentically hip-hop. So we took those ideas and ran with them, ultimately coming up with our own lyrical approach. The agency was very supportive and loved what we did.

The cool thing was that as we moved forward with new versions of scripts, the agency team actually learned from what we sent and began writing lyrics that felt much more natural to Wakil’s rapping. We also collectively found that some of the less “see-and-say” lyrics — the ones that were more abstract and metaphorical — worked better at times than the ones that literally described the actions within the user-generated videos.

There was particular love for lyrics like “have yourself a milky day” because it felt cool and naturally artistic in an impressionistic way. Beyond that, it had the added practical benefit of allowing the agency to place a number of milk-oriented clips against it, rather than one specific visual. This provided the agency with additional creative flexibility to find more user-generated clips they really liked and allowed them to more easily swap the clips out if there was an issue with rights procurement, etc.

Can you talk about creating the 15-second versions?
We had a lot of fun adapting those spots to make sure that each reflected a unique creative spin on the campaign. For the sports spot, we added some horns and gave it an athletic vibe. For the video game spot, we rearranged everything with retro 8-bit aesthetic, reflective of the heritage of classic video game culture. And for the Hispanic spot, we brought in an amazing Latin music consultant to help with lyric writing and to consult with Wakil on proper pronunciation. When all was said and done, we used a lot of internal and external resources to bring the campaign to life. This was all a lot of fun.