If you’re sipping an oat milk latte as you read this, you’re in luck.<\/p>\n
Keep reading to learn the secret sauce (er\u2013milk?) to Oatly’s killer guerilla marketing strategy.<\/p>\n
Find out why global chief creative officer fired the entire marketing department, why Oatly is a big fan of posting their lawsuits online, and Brendan Lewis’ belief that growth marketing needs to be “neutered, if not totally destroyed.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n Brendan Lewis<\/a>, Oatly\u2019s EVP of global communications and public affairs, says it all started when global chief creative officer John Schoolcraft was tasked with turning a small Swedish milk company into a global sensation.<\/p>\n His first step towards world domination? Firing the entire marketing department.<\/p>\n Then he took the creative department and put them at the center of the business. The creative team is involved in everything, from sales meetings to supply chain meetings.<\/p>\n Lewis says this allows his team at Oatly to ignore traditional marketing tactics in favor of feeding off the moment, and allows them to be more transparent with people.<\/p>\n A prime (and hilarious) example: When the Spanish dairy lobby sued Oatly<\/a> over its ad proclaiming, \u2018It\u2019s like milk, but made for humans\u2018 ad, Oatly didn\u2019t get defensive. It just posted the entire lawsuit online.<\/p>\n\n Or, my personal favorite: FckOatly.com<\/a> \u2014 Oatly\u2019s website dedicated to gathering all their bad press and negative comments in one place.<\/p>\n It\u2019s like if Yelp one-star reviews had a baby with the worst Reddit trolls, curated by Oatly themselves.<\/p>\n Lewis tells me the meetings about FckOatly.com were some of the most hilarious of his career. There are countless permutations of FckOatly.com (like FckFckOatly.com, and on, and on) and if you follow it to the end, you’ll find a phone number you can call to register your displeasure.<\/p>\n None of which he ran by legal.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd now,\u201d He concludes with a mischievous grin, \u201cWhen our marketing doesn’t land, it’s just more content for FckOatly.com. So everybody wins, even when we lose.\u201d<\/p>\n A favorite rant of Lewis\u2019 is his belief that growth marketing needs to be \u201cneutered, if not totally destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s nothing more than spreadsheet marketing,\u201d he tells me. When marketers are buying clicks and perfecting their emails for click-through rates, Lewis says they’re leaving out an essential ingredient: emotion.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you water down your message to optimize it for clicks, you lose your soul,\u201d he tells me without a trace of grandiosity. \u201cThe emotion and the belief has to be there. It can’t just be somebody looking at email click-rates all day.\u201d<\/p>\n (Got it \u2013 I\u2018ll stop obsessing about this email\u2019s subject lines\u2026)<\/p>\n For Oatly, this means taking the leap without testing it to death first. Like in 2023, when the company bought billboards in Times Square<\/a> to proudly endorse its climate label. (The Oatly team invited the dairy industry to join them. They declined.)<\/p>\n The secret sauce? Oatly is a mission-led company that happens to sell oat milk; it\u2019s not a product-led company in search of a mission. So its leaders are able to act on impulse and hunch as long as they know their messaging caters to their larger goal of promoting sustainability.<\/p>\n\n When asked which brand he looks to for inspo, Lewis spitfired a quick response: Red Bull.<\/p>\n Endearingly known as a \u201cheart attack in a can.\u201d<\/p>\n Lewis\u2019 eyes light up when he talks about them: \u201cThey don’t do product marketing. They’re all about lifestyle and people jumping from outer space. They get people talking.\u201d<\/p>\n They do, and so does Oatly. And while maybe we all can’t find the budgets (or the adrenaline-junkie volunteers, for that matter) to fling humans from the edge of space<\/a>, there’s something to be said for pushing the boundaries of our marketing campaigns to connect with people emotionally\u2026 CTRs be damned.<\/p>\nLesson 1: Put creatives at the forefront.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Lesson 2: Don’t let growth marketing dominate your strategy.<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Lesson 3: Good marketing is like free-falling from outer space.<\/strong><\/h3>\n