What Milk Learned by Launching a Brand of Its Own

Milk Agency didn’t begin with a pitch deck. It started with a photo studio.

Milk Studios, with deep roots in New York and Los Angeles, was designed as a creative home - a space for photographers, stylists, and culture-makers. But as the demand shifted from space to strategic collaboration, the agency side of Milk emerged in response to what clients were asking for: a deeper partnership.

That instinct to collaborate, not just serve, would later shape the launch of Milk Makeup, the Gen Z beauty brand that catapulted Milk into millions of homes. And it still defines how Milk Agency works today.

Rey Peralta, now Chief Innovation Officer, joined us on the ground at POSSIBLE 2025 to reflect on the agency’s evolution, what clients expect now, and why curiosity might be the most undervalued asset in brand building.

From Studio Roots to Brand Strategy

Milk Agency’s origin story isn’t theoretical. It’s rooted in client need. When Theory, one of Milk’s early brand partners, asked for e-commerce support, Milk didn’t sell an off-the-shelf service. They helped build Theory’s own capabilities from the ground up. That decision became the agency’s blueprint: co-create, don’t just consult.

This hands-on, integrated style eventually led to Milk launching its own consumer product: Milk Makeup. The team behind it wasn’t just creative. They had sat inside operations, worked across teams, and understood how a brand functions from the inside out. That experience still informs the agency’s posture today.

Innovation Isn’t Always Invention

Peralta resists the idea that innovation always means something brand new. He sees it more often as recontextualization making existing processes and insights newly relevant for shifting audiences.

That might mean using AI tools to speed up concepting and mood board development. It might mean restructuring how teams interact across a client's organization. But in every case, it begins with context, not tech for tech’s sake.

The agency experiments with tools like Midjourney and DALL·E, but the goal is acceleration, not replacement. AI helps teams get to a shared visual reference faster especially helpful in translating abstract brand ideas into real creative direction.

From Brand Storytelling to Sales Enablement

Peralta challenges the common separation of “brand marketing” and “performance.” He sees brand-building success long before the click in the awareness and credibility that smooths the path for sales.

For enterprise clients, campaigns aren’t just about reach. They’re about setting the tone for the conversation that comes next. When done well, marketing creates familiarity that shortens the sales cycle and sharpens the ask.

That’s why Milk often embeds directly with client teams working to close the loop between storytelling, team structure, and commercial outcomes.

A Framework for Consistency: Be. Say. Do.

To keep clients grounded, Milk uses a simple model: Be. Say. Do.

• Be is the essence of the brand.

• Say is the voice: the messages, content, and creative output.

• Do is the real-world execution, the actions that reinforce trust.

This isn’t a tagline. It’s a filter Milk uses to ensure every idea maps back to identity. As brands navigate fragmented attention and evolving platforms, this kind of internal clarity becomes a strategic advantage.

Bridging Performance and Creativity

With rising acquisition costs and splintered consumer attention, the pressure to connect creative thinking with measurable performance has never been higher. For Milk, that means bringing creative and performance teams closer not just within the agency, but inside client orgs too.

Peralta sees the biggest gaps not in media strategy, but in internal alignment. Sales, product, brand, and marketing often operate in silos. Performance is treated as a separate objective. Milk’s role is to collapse those walls not just between agencies and clients, but between internal teams that don’t always share KPIs.

What Brands Expect Now

Brands aren’t just buying outputs. They’re looking for guidance and partnership. With more in-house capability and access to AI tools, clients are choosing agencies that can provide clarity, not just execution.

Milk’s edge comes from its own operator experience. They’ve sold products, scaled teams, and sat inside the brands they serve. That perspective resonates with modern marketing leaders who need partners that can move at the pace of change and still hold the long view.

What Marketers Can Take from This

• Build from reality, not theory. Milk launched a brand before advising others on how to build one. That experience shaped its approach to collaboration.

• Don’t separate brand from performance. Brand marketing should clear the path for sales, not operate in isolation.

• Curiosity is infrastructure. Peralta’s take on future-proofing isn’t a tool or a platform. It’s a mindset. The best agency-client relationships start with shared curiosity and build from there.

• Embedded > outsourced. Milk doesn’t position itself as a vendor. It shows up as a partner inside the client’s structure helping them build, not just buy.