As anyone who’s ever put almond milk in mac and cheese knows, sometimes substitutes work and sometimes they just…don’t.
Determining which recipes can still work with a dairy substitute is the foundation of the latest campaign from Oatly’s editorial team—a documentary-style series called “Will it Swap?”
The five-part series follows characters like a body-building/wrestling couple (who have a hard time pronouncing the brand name) making stroganoff and a man in Brooklyn making his father-in-law’s cream puffs.
Jeremy Elias, global editorial director at Oatly, told us that casting the series was a “huge pre-production effort.” It not only involved finding people “that you wouldn’t typically find on a brand’s foray into a cooking show,” but also “trying to make them comfortable with this project.”
Elias said the goal was to help “chip away at” the hesitancy people may have about using plant-based milks in things besides coffee, tea, or cereal. “We need to move to a more plant-based diet in order to live lives that are less taxing on the climate,” he said, so this series is about showing some places where people can make plant-based substitutes.
In addition to YouTube, where the videos are housed, Elias said the campaign will feature more than 100 assets distributed across Instagram, TikTok, the Oatly website, and influencer posts.
This campaign is the latest from Oatly’s editorial team, whose job, Elias said, is trying to not “sound like every other brand.”
Oatly’s editorial team sits adjacent to its marketing team, even though the brand doesn’t call it that—instead referring to it as the “Oatly Department of Mind Control” or the ODMC, according to Mary-Kate Mele Smitherman, Oatly’s senior director of communications. Though both teams report to the chief creative officer, she told us via email that the ODMC handles “campaigns that live in print, digital, and OOH paid advertising,” while the editorial team “represents Oatly’s effort to bring their voice beyond traditional ad formats.”
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While Oatly sometimes works with outside media-buying agencies and production firms, Mele Smitherman confirmed that all Oatly creative is handled in-house.
Elias said his editorial team of five, based around the world, works on everything from podcasts, like Oatly Lake, which focused on a Michigan lake that shares the brand’s name, to short films and written pieces. At the end of the day, he said, the editorial and traditional advertising teams are working toward the same audience—which is anyone ready and willing to take on a plant-based diet.
Prior to joining the team, he worked at The Atlantic for more than six years, most recently as executive creative director and head of Re:think, the magazine’s in-house branded content team.
At Oatly, he said, his role has been taking the “sort of weirdness or irreverence” seen in the brand’s ads and applying it to its editorial work.
“It just becomes a way to reach people around some of the things we care about, which is just like being fun, quirky, and approachable in places that some of the more traditional ads don’t typically reach,” he said.
Elias said his team is looking to take “bigger bets in the world of documentary film,” including season 2 of “Will it Swap?”, which will be filmed in Europe in 2023.