How Creativity can help your brand break into bigger markets & earn billion $ valuations?! Ft.?Oatly

Ever wondered why you are unable to scale and break into bigger markets despite clocking thousands of hours & resources on your business !

The story of brands becoming overnight success seem effortless, yet scaling can be a true pain in the ass. This article is aimed at helping you learn brand and strategy secrets which can help you break and propel into bigger market

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Side Notes:

The article was originally published on medium here. If you are a medium user, click on the link here for a better reading experience.

The article is divided into two phases, which further divulge into strategy(what Oatly did), psych(why they did it) and wonder(what you can learn and do for your brand). 

*do not copy the strategies blindly for your brand*

Understand the strategy, reason with psych and think with wonder — It will enable you to think, get creative and solve the problem at hand.

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Before we dive into this adventure of how a brand by a “band of creatives” broke barriers in the dumb data driven world, let’s look at what creativity means ?

What is Creativity ?

Is creativity reserved only for designers & creators ? Not Necessarily

Does creativity have a point of view ? Not Necessarily

Is creativity always aesthetically pleasing ? Not Necessarily

____________Creativity is, “not necessarily”!____________________

Creativity is curiosity, an honest approach, a parallel, it can be towards or away.

it can be anything you want it to be but it cannot be “necessarily” what it means to be.

There are a few important things which I would like to get out of the way before we get into the how creativity can help your brand break into bigger markets featuring “adventures of the creative brand, Oatly”.

1. Why does “data” take precedent over “Creativity” ?

The reason in simple understandable english : because no matter how much we call ourselves as entrepreneurs/ business mavens/ magic marketers/ creative creeps, we hate to take risks. period. 

Non believers always ask for “proof for magic”, and try to find them through past data : which is basically things which worked out in the past, which they can use to enable present tactics.

2. Is Creativity dying with the rising age of data & robots?

In short, the answer is no. Creativity requires human curiosity. 

Any & every field requires creativity. 

With the onset and rise of ML & AI, creativity is going to become a necessity, while the robots can sure handle the number crunching for us.

All that being said, with 190 million+ businesses and 50 million+ content creators, standing out and making a mark is a necessity, which I presume you understand how difficult it can be without a creative flair !

Let’s dive into the story of a brand which was struggling to survive until it embarked on a creative adventure of its own.

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Introduction

Oatly, started in 1994 by Rickard ?ste, from the University of Lund in Sweden. 

The problem statement was and is quite simple : A replacement for cow milk catering to a niche specific market comprising of people who are lactose intolerant, vegan and environmentalists who refuse to consume animal or animal derived products.

For the first 20 years, Oatly wasn’t successful, at all. The reason as cited by John Schoolcraft (Creative Director, Oatly, since 2012) and I quote:

“ As the company grew in 1990s, it turned into something resembling a Proctor and Gamble out in the field. A small company of 50 employees, but behaving like a major multinational. Looking at computer data for how to do marketing for instance. I remember seeing an Excel spreadsheet that reported brand recognition at 70%, when the reality was less than 5% at the time. In terms of the brand, I used to say it looked like a Dutch multinational, just indistinguishable from anything else on the shelves”.

Three very important takeaways from the above paragraph:

1. A small company behaving like a multinational. — Culture
2. Looking at computer data to do marketing. — Scared Shitless
3. Product indistinguishable from anything else on the shelf. — Cliche Packaging

Oatly appointed Toni Petersson as CEO in November, 2012 and he brought in John Schoolcraft as creative director of Oatly (unofficially, initially).

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Phase I : Revolution

In my experience, the first phase of changing a company’s fate is always the most challenging. 

Why you ask ? 

People are comfortable the way things are, which is why we are calling the phase I as a revolution.

We are more comfortable in constant misery than taking an uncomfortable jump to relieve it.

a. Defining a Culture

Strategy (What Oatly Did)

John Schoolcraft built a change book. 

A book to guide the move of Oatly from a non-dairy alternative to a sustainable nutritional health company. 

The shift also meant Oatly will not characterize itself as a food processor, rather as a lifestyle brand.

Psych ( Why They Did It)

The most overlooked part of building a brand has always been company culture. 

The industrial revolution of the world brought upon us the misery of underpaid labours & workers, which is still evident in companies which apparently pay their CEOs upto 2000 times the salary of an average worker.

Not drifting further, company culture is the first and foremost step towards building a business/brand, to further add weight to my point, here is a secret from someone who has shaken up status quos and always built companies with an entirely different approach towards the same problems:

Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.” 

-Richard Branson.

Use this, how?

1. As Richard Branson said, take care of your employees first, customers will be taken care of by them. 
2. Before you start marketing your brand, look into your company culture and how they align with your brand values. 
3. Ensure every action : hiring, team management, project management, employee culture etc are aligning with how you define your culture.

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b. Positioning & Values

Do you recall the above picture of Oatly’s packaging, the one which looks like nobody would buy! 

Now, Positioning and Values are thrown around too loosely. I once sat in a meeting where a marketing someone used the word “ brand values exercise”,that was it, I walked out. 

All this does not mean that they are not important, for what it’s worth, they are the foundation of brand strategy.

Strategy (What Oatly Did)

Oatly decided to move from a food processing company to a lifestyle brand. 

A lifestyle brand is an integral part of people’s lives, like Nike, Apple etc.

The lifestyle brand approach for Oatly has the idea seeded in creating a sustainable future and a planet where every individual’s carbon footprint contribution is decreasing.

Oatly defined a few values which they would adhere to:

• Be honest 
• Be fearless
• Be human and not a logo
• Be consistently inconsistent
• Stop selling
• Be interesting not just say it, prove cool. 
• Be world class
• Don’t be evil

The below advertisement was published by Oatly, in response to a person’s real comment on the drink : “this tastes like shit”. 

Oatly, adhering to their brand values : honesty, transparency and fearlessness published the review on an advert, saying :

Some people just don’t like it, it does taste like oats. Here’s the good part, if you don’t like the taste of our oat drinks, you don’t have to drink them. Taste is personal which is why we don’t take it personal if you don’t like how they taste.

Psych ( Why they did)

Brand values are very much like our moral compass.

When you have to make a decision to do something in life, if it aligns with your moral compass, you do it.

Similarly, your brand communication is “action” and brand value is the “moral compass”.

The advert like above shows how much Oatly believes in their values. 

Instead of selling and being evil, they are honest and transparent, not trying to convert or demean people who are not willing to become consumers —now, that’s a brand I would recommend.

Use this, how?

When I speak with entrepreneurs, content creators and business owners, they are always in a dilemma about this : Should we consider building our business with a branding approach from scratch or start selling our product first ? 

The answer to this question is subjective, although what you can wonder from the story of Oatly and many other brands is to build a unique creative strategy and values, which you believe in, it will provide a foundation for your business to build on.

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c. Re-branding away from Cliche Packaging (Packaging, Tone, Personality etc)

Once Oatly had it’s strategy and brand values figured out, it was quite simple to jot down the tone, personality and other brand identity elements. 

These elements fused together to give rise to Oatly’s packaging as we know today.

Use this, how?

Your packaging and delivery of product speaks volume about your brand tone, personality and what you stand for. 

Enabling you to come up with a packaging design resonating with who you are, you need to understand the “why” of your business and “who” you represent as a brand.

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Phase II : Campaigns

Up until now, Oatly had developed their company culture, shifted 100% from their old values and evolved into a new brand personality, developed brand values, tones of voice and built the brand packaging in resonance with what they stand for.

Long ago, the game was about finding consumers, now it’s about getting found !

The above quote is a universal truth for brands and content creators.

If you are creative : you can generate a pulse which can cut through the noise and reach the consumer.

Oatly succeed not because they changed their packaging and became hip, No!

They succeeded because they stuck to who they are, they ran creative campaigns and made millions of people smile at them.

In the next 200 words, I will prove to you, how they stuck to their brand values, no matter what, literally no matter what !

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a. The Fearless Lawsuit Explosion

Strategy (What Oatly Did)

i) Campaign Brief

To explain Oatly’s oat milk process, they did an illustration. 

Through the illustration, Oatly communicated that Oat milk is prepared directly for humans from oats, rather than the long process of feeding cows and getting the milk from them. 

Sounds pretty sensible to me, except for what happened next!

As this came out, the milk lobby(like gun lobby in USA, tobacco lobby again in USA, religion lobby in 3rd world countries etc) waged a war against Oatly.

The reasoning of the lawsuit is hilarious, and now I don’t have to wonder why corporate lawyers have become a laughing stock:

“A 174 page lawsuit by the swedish milk lobbyists on the picture of “ the oatly way” : reasoning that the picture misleads, that milk comes out from the ass of the cow instead of where it comes from”.

It is indeed as dumb as it sounds !

ii) Responding in resonance to brand values

Oatly had already decided to be : 

- super transparent

- super fearless 

- super good

Oatly took the lawsuit and published it in every leading swedish newspaper as an advertisement.

Psych ( why it worked)

The lawsuit advertisement exploded and got covered by every major news and media outlet in Sweden. People of Sweden saw this as a classic David v Goliath tale, and everyone always, without a shred of doubt, loves the underdog.

Use this, how

1. Stick to your values and never back down from a good fight. 
2. The rules of business and brand are very similar to life. We succeed in life only when we stand up for ourselves, businesses work only when they fearlessly stand up for themselves, which is usually followed up by immense support of people.

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b) Riding high on the Lawsuit : A nationwide Campaign

Riding high on popularity, Oatly decided to leverage it and took another shot. 

Oatly put their slogan It’s like milk but made for humans literally everywhere, ranging from bus, train stations, subways, buildings, street corners, literally everywhere for the Sweden to see.

This wave was followed up by various forms of communication in resonance with the tagline “It’s like milk but made for humans” and “wow, no cow”.

If you are interested to understand what they did and why these campaigns worked, I will soon be publishing an article on the crazy campaigns done by Oatly soon under my label creative creeps.

Further Notes

From the adventures of Oatly, one single major takeaway is to understand who you are as a business and always build on that.

Creativity is easier preached than to practice, but it sure can lead to pathways otherwise difficult to navigate.

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Me:

I am a business strategist and a campaigner. I help brands/businesses with strategy, communication and participative campaigns.

Follow me on Medium to read exciting brand stories, creative strategies, reasoning behind advertising campaigns, behavioral science teachings, learning from business books and much much more.

You can get in touch with me at [email protected]

The article was originally published on Medium here.