Milko X Giannis
Back in 2014, Milko, one of the coolest youth brands in Greece—was seeing a decline in the chocolate milk category. That’s when they came to us at Cream+Rascal to help turn things around. Personally, Milko has always been a love brand for me. I spent most of my days on a basketball court growing up, and if you lived in Greece during the ‘90s, there’s no way you didn’t have Milko at least once. It was iconic.
Around that time, I started noticing a shift—people were beginning to talk about chocolate milk as a recovery drink thanks to its protein content. That insight opened up a new window of opportunity: instead of marketing Milko as just a delicious chocolate milk, why not reposition it as a legit sports drink?
So in 2014, we reached out to Giannis Antetokounmpo, back then, Greece’s biggest hope for the NBA. He was still under the radar locally, but his story was incredible. I immediately saw the potential: Giannis and Milko could be a powerful match.
Fast forward to today—Giannis is a global superstar, and I still take pride in the fact that I did his very first commercial. That project kicked off a five-year partnership that included two more films and a lot of magic in between.
The first film launched Milko’s BELIEVE IT platform. It was a moody, atmospheric piece that dove into Giannis’s mindset, beautifully shot and directed by Phaedon Papamichael. We followed it up with a limited-edition Milko cup and a series of events where young fans got to meet Giannis in person.
By 2017, it was time to put Giannis front and center. At that point, he was already a superstar and a role model for a whole generation of Greek teens. We didn’t want to make something that felt like an ad. We wanted to create real content—something honest and raw. So I sat down with my good friends Danny & Loco, and we planned an epic film about basketball in Greece, told through Giannis’s eyes.
We shot the film over the course of a month, trying to capture both Giannis’s deep love for the game and the gritty reality of basketball culture in Greece. It was packed with insights that any Greek hoophead could relate to.
When the film dropped in June, it went instantly viral. It generated over €800K in earned media, made waves globally, and earned a spot in YouTube’s hall of fame, not to mention at the Ermis Awards. But more importantly, it struck a chord with people. Despite going totally against the "best practices" of the time—launching a 3-minute film with zero media spend—it connected. People watched it. People shared it. And that made all the difference.
At the beginning of 2018, we wanted to try something different with Giannis. By then, he had already been involved in a number of partnerships, so we felt it was time to take a new approach. That’s when we decided to create a 3-minute animated film featuring Giannis. This one leaned more into the product side and ran nationally on TV—but its unique vibe gave it global appeal. The film went viral, and to this day, it has nearly 8.5 million views on YouTube. People are still watching it, still commenting, and still talking about it.
Film was done with my very good friend Tony Zagoraios at Yeti pictures.
Agency: Cream+rascal
My Role: Creative Director, Strategy, Art Director, Co-Writer, Production designer
Creative team: Yiannis Pallis, Elli Veinoglou, Konstantinos Argiriou, Marinos Kaklamanis