The Stable has always loved Oatly’s Super Bowl ad – ever since it was created in 2014 for a Swedish audience. In 2014, oat milk was bizarre. Hardly anyone knew about it and fewer had tried it.
The plant milk revolution was a seed waiting to germinate. Forsman & Bodenfors came up with a bold idea to get it noticed – a really silly song that people would probably hate, or at best laugh at, but would not be able to get out of their head. In three words, it summed up the advantage of oat milk that was going to become its most important selling point. CEO, Toni Petersson, bravely agreed to sing “Wow, no cow” over and over again in a voice that sounds rather like a cat mewing and really does make you wonder. Wonder is a great thing in advertising.
Wow, no cow made its US debut at the Super Bowl yesterday. A lot of people hated it. A lot of people loved it. The world is talking about it. It cost Oatly next to nothing to produce. (It had already been made.) It cost very little to make in 2014. Its Super Bowl celebrity (apparently, Super Bowl ads have to have these) was free.
Here is the exrtended cut (a 30-second spot ran at the game).
Fun facts:
- The ad was banned in Sweden after the Swedish dairy lobby sued, because it “disparaged cow’s milk as unhealthy”.
- On game day, Oatly sold t-shirts on its website that read, “I totally hated That Oatly commercial”. They sold out.
