ISSUE 006

It's been a minute.

More than a month, actually. I'll save the full update for the bottom, but the short version is: new baby, very little sleep.

For ISSUE 006 of MAD I've got a guest-written deep dive into a Melbourne-based clothing brand that blew up on Instagram and then did something that I think is genuinely fascinating. For their latest campaign, they went completely off-algorithm. It stopped feeling true to who they are.

It's a great piece. Let's get into it...

How far can you push a concept?

A Look at Milkbar’s Venture off the Algorithm…

Written by Henry Duffield​

Social media has had an incalculable impact on how advertising looks. One day, we’ll look back at the developments of Instagram and Pinterest and pinpoint the moments where colour grades shifted, props became gigantic, and vertical video replaced landscape campaigns.

It also opened the door for younger, less resourced creatives to throw their proverbial hats in the ring. Enter: Simon Agosta, the founder of Milkbar, a clothing brand based out of Melbourne, Australia.

Selling mid-century style T-shirts and tank tops, bomber jackets and cardigans, Milkbar broke through after 5 years of old-school grinding. They had developed their product and dialled in their shoots, and they had finally been rewarded by the infamous Algorithm. Now? They’re trying to get off of it.

“We went through a lot of growth, mostly through Instagram ads, but it felt like we sacrificed a bit of customer rapport,” Simon admitted to me. “This might be an apology.” In an industry that has thrived via social media for a decade now, Milkbar is launching their new campaign without Instagram, the platform that helped Simon quit his job washing dishes.

It’s a risk, but it makes sense. Here’s why

Context: Creating mythology from the past

Milkbar’s campaigns have invented a romanticised version of the past by combining familiar Hollywood motifs with iconic Melbourne sights. A model channels a 1950s Marlon Brando in terrace houses that any local would immediately recognise. A typical American diner shot is staged in a classic Italian migrant-owned cafe. It’s not exactly nostalgic, because the scenes don’t refer to any previous experience; It’s not memory, but imagination.

Australia doesn’t usually get this treatment. The people pride themselves on their humility, and pop culture over the last 70 years has been dominated by American and British film and TV. There is no 1950s Australian sex symbol or widely revered mid-century design style.

That gap is where Milkbar’s art direction shines – it’s an opportunity to create a brand mythology that sticks.

Art Direction: Giving Masculinity the Fashion Treatment

The other theme Milkbar hits is taking a progressive view on traditional masculinity. “I played Australian Rules Football while I was learning to sew clothes,” says Simon. “I think that a lot of what we do at Milkbar is bring nuanced, and sometimes misaligned, identities and reinterpret them to be whole again.”

The intent is clear in their campaign photos, where the stoic, macho man archetype is treated like a classic fashion subject. Black and white studio shots reference Richard Avedon or Irving Penn, with the silhouette of a woman in a dress replaced with that of a jacked dude in a tank top. Front-on flash once aimed at Kate Moss is now directed at a man with a buzzcut tucking his tee into his jeans.

The most obvious example of this was the hook of Milkbar’s first viral video: “What’s the sluttiest thing a man can wear?” Referring to their tight white t-shirts, audiences appreciated the self-deprecation and irony of putting a lens frequently aimed elsewhere at the new generation of mid-20s performative men.

The New Campaign: Going offline

Ultimately, Milkbar knows that it is dressing up with classic aesthetics; people in their 20s pretending like they know a world before laptops existed. But it also knows that you know it too, so they’ll happily play with the idea. The question is: How far can you push it?

Well, all the way off the internet (sort of).

In the big 2-6, Milkbar’s next launch is starting with a newspaper. The brand has enlisted local talent and staff to write articles for the Melbourne Tribune, a fictional broadsheet that is being distributed to cafès in Melbourne’s trendy inner north. Amongst opinion pieces, satirical news stories, and football results are ads for Milkbar’s popup in the last weekend of May.

Simon was serious about the execution. “From the start, the brief was: “If someone picks this up in a cafè, how long can we immerse them in a world where they’re actually reading a 1950s newspaper? The printing methods and paper were period accurate.”

It’s not an obvious strategy for a clothing brand that blew up online, but it is an interesting continuation of their visual language. The traditional, analog world we’ve seen in photoshoots has now extended to the brand’s media and distribution.

The brand isn’t closing its social media accounts, and we’ll likely see an online release after their in-person pop-up. But for now, Milkbar’s customers are being driven further into the mythology that drew them to the brand in the first place.

About this contributor: Henry is a content creator that loves to nerd out on fashion and design history. You can check out his work here​

👁️ More to Digest

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• ​Listen to UNPROMPTED: I had a really fun chat with Ollie Bartlett on his podcast. He was such a great interviewer asking me questions about creativity, hobbies, and art direction that no one has asked me before. Check it out on YouTube or Substack.

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• ​More Modern Art Direction Reels: Have you noticed a new face on the M AD instagram channel? Ken is an art director and creator who is bridging those two worlds similar to how I have approached it. So I've been excited to collab with him and bring his thoughtful commentary to the M AD community. Excited to see where things go with more brains and hands contributing.
  Don't miss this video about Fredagain...

Okay, the personal update I promised.

I just had a baby. So yes, it's been a minute, and yes, I'm running on two hours of sleep and pure delusion. But I'm genuinely energized about what's coming, maybe more than I've been in a while.

Here's what I'm building:

The next session of my bootcamp, NEXT Art Director, is going to kick off again in July. Stay tuned for enrollment updates, but if you've been on the fence, this is the one. More guest speakers, more material, more of everything that made the last cohort great. This next one is shaping up to be the best yet.

And for those who aren't ready to jump into a live cohort, I'm deep in building a self-paced version of the course.

Honestly, my headspace right now is fully in teaching mode, and I'm excited to show you what I've been cooking up.

Good to be back, in the way that I never really left, but I'm starting to claw my way back.

Jason 🤘