Got Recession? Come on Down!

Recession milk.

The only beverage that will keep your bones and your pocketbook strong.

Cow juice equals Dow juice.

One could riff on this until the cows come home.

The face of this push is financial empress Suze Orman, weirdly intense even with a milk mustache as she sells cost-effective calcium in a new ad. "Investing in your health always pays off," the Suze tells you via ad copy. "Even at today's prices an eight-ounce glass only costs about a quarter. So drink up. You can't afford not to."

"It was our Manhattan Project," Kurt Graetzer, chief executive of the Milk Processor Education Program, says of the new milk campaign. "At our last board meeting we realized: How can we not address the role of milk in a troubled economy? We hadn't even left the board meeting before we knew that Suze would be the face" of recession milk.

The latest in a time-honored tradition of recession products.

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As a rule, we like to buy stuff. The economy's built on it, Americans are used to it. (Can the President-Bush-encouraging-shopping-after-9/11 example be trotted out yet again? It can.)

In recessions, our purchasing habits get screwy. We still buy sin: alcohol, chocolate -- goodies that won't break the bank but still let us feel decadent. (Gawker.com recently ran an article on "recession sex" -- those skeezy Craigslist postings popping up lately, which argue that sex is still free and fun, so let's hook up, baby.) But most other things -- clothing, dinners out -- we cut back on.

And so in a consumer economy where we don't need half of what we buy, where many purchases straddle the line between unnecessary and totally unnecessary, recession-wary folk must be encouraged to spend.

The trick for advertisers, during these times, is to acknowledge the rough spot customers are in without sending them into a panic. Not only does it still make sense to buy the panini press, but such a purchase will ultimately save your retirement funds.