How Oatly Became a Creative Force, by Breaking All of Marketing’s Rules

When brand-new innovative staff members sign up with Oatly, the onboarding begins with a single direction: “Unlearn whatever you learn about marketing.”

According to Oatly innovative director Michael Lee, that’s the only method to develop a really distinct brand name voice: You should run without the standards that bind most other business — consisting of how choices are made, how groups are structured, and how the brand name voice is even specified.

Many huge business have a “brand name book.” It’s a design guide that specifies how the brand name looks and speaks, so that every touchpoint corresponds. Oatly does not have one.

“We’ve constantly sort of declined to do sort of brand name books,” Lee states. “Whenever we deal with a partner, they’re constantly asking us about our brand name book. And we do not have one due to the fact that as quickly as you do one, you seem like you need to stay with it, and we ‘d rather have the flexibility to simply do something totally various if we seemed like it.”

For a business that’s turned into a worldwide provocateur precious for its product packaging and non-stop human tone, that flexibility matters tremendously. Here’s what Lee’s method exposes about what it in fact requires to develop a brand name with genuine point of view– and why it gets more difficult, not much easier, the larger you get.

The Oatly origins

Oatly released in Sweden in 1994, initially placed as oat-based option to dairy. Its branding was peaceful and uninteresting.

Things started to alter in 2012, when Toni Petersson became its brand-new CEO. John Schoolcraft him joined him as primary innovative officer, then got rid of the whole marketing department and restore it with creatives at the center of business. Their objective: Transform Oatly into a brand name with character and global appeal.

Schoolcraft’s brand-new design was uncommon. Oatly’s innovative group (which called itself the Department of Mind Control) would run mostly by itself. It would compose its own briefs, set its own technique, and perform its own work.

Schoolcraft left in 2025, however that structure still stays.

“No one truly can ban what we’re doing,” states Lee, who signed up with as imaginative director in 2017, the very same year Oatly went into the U.S. market. “It’s not like we’re providing to any marketing director or sales guys.”

This is a truly unusual setup, however Lee thinks it’s an essential one. If you desire an unique brand name voice, he states, you can’t simply work with innovative individuals and expect the very best. You should eliminate the layers of approval that naturally sand down anything intriguing, and empower creatives to genuinely own and run their work.

With fantastic innovative power comes terrific innovative obligation.

“When things work out, fantastic. You likewise have to take it in the chin when things do not go well,” Lee states. “Then you should have the wherewithal and guts to continue being at that edge.”

Oatly’s innovative director, Michael Lee.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Oatly

A Brand Voice is a Feeling

That uncommon business structure has actually produced an uncommonly voice-driven item. Oatly has lots of artistically unique choices, and speaks in an amusing, frequently intriguing manner in which assisted turn the brand name into something precious and unique.

Here are a few of those uncommon options:

• On the front of its container, the name Oatly looks like this: OAT-LY. Why the hyphen? Even if it looked cool.

• The side of its oat milk container has plenty of thick, self-referential, continuously altering text. One variation started: “Before we composed this sentence, there was a great deal of void on the side of this plan and we didn’t understand what to do with it …”

• Its marketing frequently does the same. One signboard stated: “Why do huge oat-milk advertisements need to mess up cool areas?” Another stated: “Maybe a social networks star will take a picture of this poster and you will see it on Instagram and like it way more than you do today.”

• Oatly when explained oat milk as “like milk however produced human beings.” That triggered a suit from Sweden’s dairy lobby, which Oatly then (ahem) milked for a great deal of public press and compassion.

In spite of Oatly’s unique voice, Lee states he can’t precisely discuss what’s “on brand name” for this brand name. Nor does he wish to.

“There is an Oatly concept, and there is … that is not an Oatly concept,” he states. “How do you understand? I do not understand. It’s simply you establish a sensation. You establish this sense for what feels Oatly and what does not feel Oatly, and it’s tough to cover words around it.”

This may sound discouraging for anybody looking for a repeatable procedure. Lee’s point is that a genuine brand name voice withstands being minimized to a list. It needs to end up being a fluid, ever-evolving thing.

“A great deal of what I’ve discussed– a business acting human and doing human things– is simple to state, and it sounds sort of regular,” Lee states. “But the truth within corporations and organizations it is incredibly challenging. Since as everybody understands, when you enter into a business, all of a sudden it’s business speak. You talk like you would not talk in your home.”

As an outcome, he states, brand name leaders frequently end up being policemans: Their tasks are to produce standards that feel safe and avoid bad concepts. Lee believes an imaginative leader needs to do the opposite, by developing sufficient shared impulse for everybody to acknowledge an excellent concept. That method, they can jointly decline concepts that are safe however do not feel real to brand name.

Nerve Gets Harder As You Scale

Start-up creators typically lament: If just I had the marketing spending plan of the huge guys …

Lee states start-up creators ought to take benefit of their size. When you’re little, it’s much easier to take big dangers. “It is much more difficult to be disruptive and bold with your brand name at the $100 million level than it is at the $10 million level,” he states. “That, I believe, is the most hard obstacle– to keep that edge and continue to be disruptive.”

At scale, every project deals with more examination, more internal stakeholders, and more pressure to safeguard what’s currently been developed. This is when most brand names silently sand off their edges, he states. They trade their initial voice for something more secure.

How do you maintain that imaginative stability? Lee states everything returns to principles: How are you structured? And is the business really developed to support creatives? Dedication needs to come “not from simply the imaginative director, however the whole business, from the leading all the method down,” he states.

That’s another factor he’s grateful for the structure at Oatly.

When there’s no brand name book, the imaginative group needs to continuously form and fine-tune the brand name itself. When there’s no layers of approval, the innovative group feels a deep responsibility to get it. And when a brand-new employee is informed to “forget whatever you learn about marketing,” they can begin to specify a brand-new method on their own.