How Oatly Grew to become a Creative Force, by Breaking All of Advertising’s Rules

When new inventive workers be part of Oatly, the onboarding begins with a single instruction: “Unlearn everything you know about marketing.”

According to Oatly inventive director Michael Lee, that’s the one technique to construct a very distinctive model voice: You should function with out the rules that bind most different firms — together with how selections are made, how groups are structured, and the way the model voice is even outlined.

For instance, most large firms have a “brand book.” It’s a method information that defines how the model seems to be and speaks, so that each touchpoint is constant. But Oatly doesn’t have one.

“We’ve always kind of refused to do kind of brand books,” Lee says. “Whenever we work with a partner, they’re always asking us about our brand book. And we don’t have one because as soon as you do one, you feel like you have to stick to it, and we’d rather have the freedom to just do something completely different if we felt like it.”

For an organization that’s grown into a world provocateur beloved for its packaging and relentlessly human tone, that freedom issues enormously. Here’s what Lee’s strategy reveals about what it really takes to construct a model with actual perspective — and why it will get more durable, not simpler, the larger you get.

The Oatly origins

Oatly launched in Sweden in 1994, initially positioned as oat-based various to dairy. Its branding was quiet and boring.

Things started to vary in 2012, when Toni Petersson grew to become its new CEO. John Schoolcraft him joined him as chief inventive officer, then eradicated all the advertising and marketing division and rebuilt it with creatives on the heart of the enterprise. Their objective: Transform Oatly right into a model with character and worldwide attraction.

Schoolcraft’s new mannequin was uncommon. Oatly’s inventive workforce (which named itself the Department of Mind Control) would function largely by itself. It would write its personal briefs, set its personal technique, and execute its personal work.

Schoolcraft departed in 2025, however that construction nonetheless stays.

“No one really can veto what we’re doing,” says Lee, who joined as inventive director in 2017, the identical yr Oatly entered the U.S. market. “It’s not like we’re presenting to any marketing director or sales guys.”

This is a genuinely uncommon setup, however Lee believes it’s an important one. If you need a distinct model voice, he says, you possibly can’t simply rent inventive folks and hope for one of the best. You should take away the layers of approval that instinctively sand down something provocative, and empower creatives to really personal and function their work.

But with nice inventive energy comes nice inventive accountability.

“When things go well, great. But you also have to take it in the chin when things don’t go well,” Lee says. “Then you must have the wherewithal and courage to continue being at that edge.”

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

A Brand Voice is a Feeling

That uncommon company construction has produced an unusually voice-driven product. Oatly is filled with creatively distinct selections, and speaks in a humorous, usually provocative manner that helped flip the model into one thing beloved and distinct.

Here are a number of of these uncommon selections:

• On the entrance of its carton, the identify Oatly seems like this: OAT-LY. Why the hyphen? Just as a result of it seemed cool.

• The aspect of its oat milk carton is filled with dense, self-referential, continually altering textual content. One model started: “Before we wrote this sentence, there was a lot of empty space on the side of this package and we didn’t know what to do with it…”

• Its advertising and marketing usually follows go well with. One billboard stated: “Why do giant oat-milk ads have to ruin cool neighborhoods?” Another stated: “Maybe a social media celebrity will take a photo of this poster and you will see it on Instagram and like it way more than you do right now.”

• Oatly as soon as described oat milk as “like milk but made for humans.” That prompted a lawsuit from Sweden’s dairy foyer, which Oatly then (ahem) milked for lots of public press and sympathy.

But regardless of Oatly’s distinctive voice, Lee says he can’t precisely clarify what’s “on brand” for this model. Nor does he wish to.

“There is an Oatly idea, and there is… that is not an Oatly idea,” he says. “How do you know? I don’t know. It’s just you develop a feeling. You develop this sense for what feels Oatly and what doesn’t feel Oatly, and it’s hard to wrap words around it.”

This would possibly sound irritating for anybody searching for a repeatable course of. But Lee’s level is that an actual model voice resists being diminished to a guidelines. It should turn out to be a fluid, ever-evolving factor.

“A lot of what I’ve spoken about — a company acting human and doing human things — is easy to say, and it sounds kind of normal,” Lee says. “But the reality within corporations and businesses it is extremely difficult. Because as everyone knows, when you go into a company, suddenly it’s company speak. You talk like you wouldn’t talk at home.”

As a end result, he says, model leaders usually turn out to be law enforcement officials: Their jobs are to create pointers that really feel secure and stop unhealthy concepts. But Lee thinks a inventive chief ought to do the alternative, by constructing sufficient shared intuition for everybody to acknowledge a good suggestion. That manner, they will collectively reject concepts which can be secure however don’t really feel true to model.

Courage Gets Harder As You Scale

Startup founders usually lament: If solely I had the advertising and marketing finances of the large guys…

But Lee says startup founders ought to make the most of their measurement. When you’re small, it’s simpler to take massive dangers. “It is much harder to be disruptive and courageous with your brand at the $100 million level than it is at the $10 million level,” he says. “That, I think, is the most difficult challenge — to maintain that edge and continue to be disruptive.”

At scale, each marketing campaign faces extra scrutiny, extra inside stakeholders, and extra strain to guard what’s already been constructed. This is when most manufacturers quietly sand off their edges, he says. They commerce their unique voice for one thing safer.

So how do you protect that inventive integrity? Lee says all of it goes again to fundamentals: How are you structured? And is the corporate actually constructed to help creatives? Commitment should come “not from just the creative director, but the entire company, from the top all the way down,” he says.

That’s another reason he’s grateful for the construction at Oatly.

When there’s no model ebook, the inventive workforce should continually form and refine the model itself. When there’s no layers of approval, the inventive workforce feels a deep obligation to get it proper. And when a brand new workforce member is informed to “forget everything you know about marketing,” they will begin to outline a brand new manner for themselves.

When new inventive workers be part of Oatly, the onboarding begins with a single instruction: “Unlearn everything you know about marketing.”

According to Oatly inventive director Michael Lee, that’s the one technique to construct a very distinctive model voice: You should function with out the rules that bind most different firms — together with how selections are made, how groups are structured, and the way the model voice is even outlined.

For instance, most large firms have a “brand book.” It’s a method information that defines how the model seems to be and speaks, so that each touchpoint is constant. But Oatly doesn’t have one.