Muscle Milk was born on one simple premise: Athletes need a lot of protein to build muscle and recover from workouts quicker. The beverage quickly developed a cult-following among bodybuilders and in 2008 the Pepsi Bottling Group saw an opportunity to distribute the product nationally. Our challenge was to come up with a campaign that would have a broad appeal to mass consumers and not just meatheads at the gym named Chaz.

Keeping in mind that most big box grocery shoppers tend to be moms, we needed to turn “muscles” into something more universally liked. And that’s exactly what we did. Creating humorous print and point of sale ads, we featured the iconic Muscle Milk bottle with the word “Muscle” replaced by our headlines, “Wow, My Tush Looks Amazing Milk,” “Break Walnuts With Your Biceps Milk,” “Bears Can’t Eat What Bears Can’t Catch Milk,” etc. In doing so, we took what could be perceived as a product weakness and turned it into a positive end benefit.

And the results? Sales for Muscle Milk in the first quarter of 2009 were up 17% from a year prior, the 14 oz. Ready-to-Drink product quickly became the backbone of the CytoSport franchise, and beverages nationwide trembled in fear at the mere presence of the Muscle Milk bottle.