2025 Past Winners

2025 Brief | Ogilvy × MILO

Team Name Nunchucks
Student Names Unique Florence Viernes, Jay Readings, Olive Cato, Bella-Lucia Griffin
University Auckland University of Technology (AUT)

Brief Objectives

  • Reconnect MILO with young adults who still love the product but have begun to leave the brand and its childhood associations behind.
  • Position MILO as the ultimate celebration of choice and personalisation, recognising that everyone has their own way of making and enjoying it.
  • Develop a bold, surprising tactical idea that sparks high-conviction, low-stakes debate, encourages people to choose a side and puts MILO at the centre of the conversation.
  • Use culturally relevant touchpoints—such as out-of-home, social, partnerships, packaging or a stunt—to generate attention within a $30,000 production budget.

Winning Pitch

Key Insight: Gen Z no longer see MILO as contemporary, but they still feel nostalgic and have strong opinions on how it should be made. Inspired by grassroots, low-budget internet moments, the team recognized that young people don’t want to be advertised to; they want to take part in authentic conversations. Leveraging these high-spirited, low-stakes debates turned MILO into a cultural talking point.

Key idea: MILO can’t, but Milo can. MILO must stick to its official recipe, but Australians named Milo can champion their own versions. Starting with a cryptic “Is your name Milo?” call-out and hashtag MiloCan chatter, real people named Milo became unofficial ambassadors, each promoting their own way of making MILO, and sparking debate online. It built to a live cook-off to crown Australia’s “official unofficial MILO recipe,” deliberately feeling authentic and cultural rather than a polished ad.

Ogilvy × MILO

Ogilvy and their client, MILO®, presented a playful, culture-led brief for the 2025 Capstone Challenge. Students were tasked with developing a bold tactical idea that would make the iconic Australian brand feel relevant again to 17–30-year-olds by sparking high-conviction, low-stakes debate. Working within a $30,000 production budget, teams needed to create a small moment capable of punching above its weight and putting MILO® at the centre of the conversation.