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

When new imaginative workforce associate Oatly, the onboarding starts alongside a sole instruction: “Unlearn everything you cognize concerning marketing.”

According to Oatly imaginative director Michael Lee, that’s the lone way to build a really distinctive brand voice: You must run without the guidelines that tie most another companies — including how decisions are made, how teams are structured, and how the brand sound is equal defined.

For example, most big companies have a “brand book.” It’s a manner guide that defines how the brand looks and speaks, so that all touchpoint is consistent. But Oatly does not have one.

“We’ve continually benevolent of refused to do benevolent of brand books,” Lee says. “Whenever we activity alongside a partner, they’re continually asking us concerning our brand book. And we don’t have one since as shortly as you do one, you awareness akin you have to rod to it, and we’d fairly have the liberty to fair do item entirely distinct if we felt akin it.”

For a business that’s grown into a earth provocateur cherished for its packaging and relentlessly individual tone, that liberty matters enormously. Here’s what Lee’s method reveals concerning what it actually takes to build a brand alongside genuine viewpoint — and why it gets harder, not easier, the bigger you get.

The Oatly origins

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

Things began to alter in 2012, whenever Toni Petersson became its new CEO. John Schoolcraft him joined him as chief imaginative officer, afterward eliminated the complete promotion division and rebuilt it alongside creatives at the center of the business. Their goal: Transform Oatly into a brand alongside character and global appeal.

Schoolcraft’s new example was unusual. Oatly’s imaginative squad (which named itself the Department of Mind Control) would run mostly on its own. It would compose its own briefs, set its own strategy, and execute its own work.

Schoolcraft departed in 2025, but that construction motionless remains.

“No one really can veto what we’re doing,” says Lee, who joined as imaginative director in 2017, the identical twelvemonth Oatly entered the U.S. market. “It’s not akin we’re presenting to any promotion director or revenue guys.”

This is a genuinely rare setup, but Lee believes it’s a critical one. If you desire a distinct brand voice, he says, you can’t fair employ imaginative group and anticipation for the best. You must eliminate the layers of endorsement that instinctively dirt downward item provocative, and empower creatives to really own and run their work.

But alongside awesome imaginative power comes awesome imaginative responsibility.

“When things go well, great. But you additionally have to obtain it in the chin whenever things don’t go well,” Lee says. “Then you must have the wherewithal and bravery to continue being at that edge.”

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

A Brand Voice is a Feeling

That different company construction has produced an unusually voice-driven product. Oatly is complete of creatively distinct decisions, and speaks in a funny, frequently provocative way that helped rotate the brand into item cherished and distinct.

Here are a few of those different choices:

• On the forefront of its carton, the name Oatly appears akin this: OAT-LY. Why the hyphen? Just since it looked cool.

• The flank of its oat dairy carton is complete of dense, self-referential, continually changing text. One type began: “Before we wrote this sentence, there was a lot of bare area on the flank of this bundle and we didn’t cognize what to do alongside it…”

• Its promotion frequently follows suit. One advertisement said: “Why do elephantine oat-milk ads have to ruin chill neighborhoods?” Another said: “Maybe a social media community fig volition obtain a photo of this poster and you volition see it on Instagram and akin it way additional than you do correct now.”

• Oatly formerly described oat dairy as “like dairy but made for humans.” That prompted a lawsuit from Sweden’s dairy lobby, which Oatly afterward (ahem) milked for a lot of community media and sympathy.

But notwithstanding Oatly’s distinctive voice, Lee says he can’t exactly explain what’s “on brand” for this brand. Nor does he desire 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 fair you create a feeling. You create this awareness for what feels Oatly and what doesn’t awareness Oatly, and it’s difficult to cover words about it.”

This power audio frustrating for anyone seeking a repeatable process. But Lee’s item is that a genuine brand sound resists being reduced to a checklist. It must rotate into a fluid, ever-evolving thing.

“A lot of what I’ve spoken concerning — a business acting individual and doing individual things — is uncomplicated to say, and it appears benevolent of normal,” Lee says. “But the actuality inside corporations and businesses it is extremely difficult. Because as everyone knows, whenever you go into a company, abruptly it’s business speak. You conversation akin you wouldn’t conversation at home.”

As a result, he says, brand leaders frequently rotate into constabulary officers: Their jobs are to create guidelines that awareness harmless and forestall bad ideas. But Lee thinks a imaginative chief should do the opposite, by construction adequate shared intuition for everyone to acknowledge a fine idea. That way, they can collectively refuse ideas that are harmless but don’t awareness true to brand.

Courage Gets Harder As You Scale

Startup founders frequently lament: If lone I had the promotion prosperity of the big guys…

But Lee says startup founders should obtain advantage of their size. When you’re small, it’s easier to obtain ample risks. “It is much harder to be disruptive and courageous alongside your brand at the $100 myriad flat than it is at the $10 myriad level,” he says. “That, I think, is the most difficult difficulty — to keep that border and continue to be disruptive.”

At scale, all run faces additional scrutiny, additional inner stakeholders, and additional force to defend what’s already been built. This is whenever most brands quietly dirt off their edges, he says. They commerce their first sound for item safer.

So how do you maintain that imaginative integrity? Lee says it all goes rear to fundamentals: How are you structured? And is the business really built to assistance creatives? Commitment must arrive “not from fair the imaginative director, but the complete company, from the top all the way down,” he says.

That’s one additional logic he’s grateful for the construction at Oatly.

When there’s no brand book, the imaginative squad must continually form and refine the brand itself. When there’s no layers of approval, the imaginative squad feels a profound duty to get it right. And whenever a new squad associate is told to “forget everything you cognize concerning marketing,” they can commencement to define a new way for themselves.