Watch the full ad here:

Kate's thoughts:

"I have a confession to make. I very nearly killed the Milky Bar Kid.

Not literally of course, but as the fresh-out-of-uni planner on the Nestle account, I was charged with running a brand planning workshop (you know the sort - all blue-sky thinking and ‘no idea is a bad idea’ vibes). In this case, our dubious conclusion was that The Milky Bar Kid had had his day.

Thankfully, my boss had the wisdom I lacked. She overruled me, patiently explaining the value of ‘brand characters’ (this pre-dated Byron Sharp and System1, so the world had yet to be introduced to ‘fluent devices’ and ‘distinctive brand assets’), thus ensuring the Milky Bar Kid lived on.

Since 1961, the Milky Bar Kid has been one of British advertising's most enduring characters. That bespectacled blonde cowboy bursting through saloon doors with his iconic catchphrase – "The Milky Bars are on me!" – became woven into the cultural fabric of generations. Ten different child actors played the role across five decades, making it one of the longest-running character campaigns in advertising history.

Why did the character endure for so long? I suspect a large part of it was his dual appeal. Parents loved the naive charm of a child actor playing tough – there's something irresistibly sweet about a slightly nerdy bespectacled kid in a Stetson playing the hero. Children, meanwhile, enjoyed the story of an ordinary kid doing extraordinary things. And then there’s the jingle, which burrowed so deeply into the national consciousness that it became intergenerational glue. The generation who grew up with the Kid in the 1960s and 70s became parents themselves in the 80s and 90s, presumably feeling a nostalgic tug when their own children encountered him.

The lesson? Strong brand assets are rare and precious. If you've got one, consider yourself lucky – much of the heavy lifting is already done. Your job becomes what the brilliant John Bartle called 'imaginative repetition': keeping the familiar fresh without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Don't get me wrong, that's not easy to do well, but it's worth the effort and infinitely better than execution by an overeager junior planner armed with too many Post-it notes and a whiteboard. The Milky Bar Kid may have eventually ridden off into the sunset as an advertising character, but he deserved better than my premature eulogy."