MTV's Iconic Catchprase Was A 'Rip-Off' Of A Classic Oatmeal Ad Campaign

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Even a great movie can be sunk by an awful tagline, just as a great slogan can save a company — even if it might be a rip-off. As it turns out, before "I want my MTV!" became a ubiquitous saying in the 1980s, there was a campaign for an oatmeal brand in the 1950s and '60s featuring sports stars of that time, such as Mickey Mantle and Wilt Chamberlain, crying and whining, "I want my Maypo!"

According to Fred Seibert, MTV's first creative director, advertising guru George Lois had overseen the Maypo campaign. When he and his volatile but brilliant partner, Dale Pon, were hired to get MTV on the pop culture map — an unlikely bet at the time — Lois offered up his old oatmeal slogan, and "I want my MTV!" was born. It was hardly subtle or unconscious, too. As Tom Freston, who oversaw MTV for Viacom in the 2000s, recounted in his memoir, "Unplugged: Adventures from MTV to Timbuktu," Lois literally said, "Let's rip off my old Maypo campaign!"

The MTV slogan was amazingly successful and came just in the nick of time. MTV was struggling to get in the lineups of different cable companies in the early '80s, but with little success. However, once rock stars like The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Pat Benatar, Billy Idol, and others came on board to make ads featuring the "I want my MTV!" slogan, the cable operators caved.

MTV not only got on many companies' rosters, but had baby boomers and Gen-Xers everywhere getting excited about their content. For many, it was their first introduction to the network, and they were pumped to experience the hottest new music videos of the day and, eventually, soon-to-be classic MTV shows.

It turns out that when George Lois pitched recycling the Maypo ads for MTV, he presented a storyboard that duplicated the original version from the '50s and '60s. Those storyboards had people like Mick Jagger and David Bowie pleading for MTV just like sports stars had done for Maypo. No one was on board for that version of the ads, not wanting to see rock stars act like big babies. However, there's more than one way to say "I want my MTV!" Pon had the rock stars say it with rock n' roll pride while calling on everyone to phone their cable companies and demand they add MTV to their channel line-up. That turned out to be the right choice.

After three weeks of running this ad campaign, cable operators across the country were signing up for MTV. As Tom Freston recounted in his memoir (per Vanity Fair), they added a million new homes each month for more than the next two years. Finally, they closed in on New York and Los Angeles, major media markets that had everything from critics to opinion makers to magazine editors.

MTV has since moved on from the slogan (and music videos, opting for reality television instead), and while the network has since become a cultural mainstay, it would probably have never happened without this campaign. It was one of the most successful ad campaigns ever, to the extent that people no longer think of oatmeal when they hear, "I want my MTV!"