Fck Oatly takes transparency, authenticity to a whole level

fckoatly.com

That’s the name of the site. And get this: Oatly created it.

You heard that correctly. Oatly, the oat milk brand based in Sweden, created a site devoted strictly to its haters and those who have said mean, dishonest and outright lies about the company for last several years on the internet.

And it’s the best cause marketing case study I’ve seen in quite a while.

Wait, this is a cause marketing case study? Well, maybe not entirely. But, in the opening paragraph on the site, Oatly does says,?“to understand the full story of Oatly’s mission to shift people away from dairy, and towards a life that’s less taxing on the planet, also browse this profanity-laced website we finally got approval to launch.”

The site goes on to direct you to content that discusses significant crisis situations in Oatly’s past including massive lawsuits, global boycotts and advertisements that virtually offended everyone.

Why would Oatly do such a thing? Like they say,?“it’s super convenient to have the latest boycotts and criticisms all in one place. But more importantly, we’re not the type of company to hide from moments like these.?We see all the negative headlines, posts and petitions as an inevitable consequence of trying to create positive societal change.”

Smart. If any of these things come up in the future, they have a place to point people. And, in the event of future crisis’ they also have a place to point people and say “hey, look, we know we’ve had some challenges in the past and here’s how we handled those.”

But also, for a company with a strong mission to make a better planet by “growing stuff to eat instead of growing stuff to feed animals that we then eat”, Oatly has created content designed to get people’s attention.

And it seems to be working. And as far as I can tell, Oatly hasn’t even really been pushing the site all that much.

A quick look at their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feeds find no promotional mentions of the new site. The only spots I saw it mentioned where instances where people tweeted at Oatly how much they loved the new site.

This isn’t all that surprising, is it? After all, isn’t this what most of us want from brands? To demonstrate authenticity and transparency? How many times have we seen companies hide behind corporate PR statements when bad things happen? Or, deny responsibility? Or, blame others? Or, worse yet, stay completely quiet?

What does Oatly do? They create a site–named fckoatly.com–that embraces all their crisis and foibles in one spot.

In 2023 content marketing context, that’s simply brilliant.

And it also demonstrates what it takes to cut through the marketing clutter in 2023.

Big risks. Going against the grain (who else is doing this?!?!?!). And whole lot of authenticity.

PS: The best part? Click on the link at the bottom of the site for one last jab at the haters.