Oatly has done some weird shit. Its 2020 Super Bowl ad, for example, was the song, Wow, No Cow, sung by the company’s CEO, Toni Petersson, in a field.
Now the oat milk brand has created The New Norm&Al Show, a five part-series featuring milk carton puppets and besties, Norm & Al. The campaign is explained in the fifth episode, Behind The Scenes, when Norm tells Al, “We’re from inside the minds of some pretty disturbed people at Oatly, who decided using puppets was the best way to talk about the importance of a plant-based diet…”
Those “pretty disturbed people” work at the Oatly Department of Mind Control, the company’s in-house agency. The series delivers its message in ways as unsubtle as messages can be. Deliberately. In the first five-minute episode, Norm’s Old Pal Milk, for instance, we find out how Norm became plant-based in a parody coming out scene. We also learn that Norm and Milk used to be mates in the “old days” when they also smoked and raved. Norm has now “grown up”. Milk is the jealous “old friend”, who hasn’t.
The other awkward episodes include terrible singing and dancing as well as clunky scenarios. Al becomes a hipster (you don’t have to be weird to drink plant-based) in one, has milk and meat cravings (you don’t have to go totally vegan) in two others and eventually finds out he is a poetic device in the behind-the-scenes finale.
The films were made in collaboration with Nexus Studios, director, Conor Finnegan and puppet maker, Andy Gent, best known for Wes Anderson’s stop motion feature, Isle of Dogs.
Oatly creative director, Michael Lee, commented, “After trying to help people eat more plant-based with super long Instagram posts, dorky Superbowl ads, nonsensical headlines and picking on dads in the UK, we’ve now landed on puppets to do the job. The cool thing about The New Norm&Al Show is that it lets us deliver a message that people might normally roll their eyes at, but because it’s puppets, well, who doesn’t like puppets? Despite that last sentence, Norm & Al are really just about adding some fuzzy felt, wobbly arms and flappy heads with well-styled wigs to the plant-based movement, and if that all makes it easier for society to grab on to, then yeah, these puppets will be a total success.”
All five episodes of The New Norm&Al Show will appear on YouTube and Oatly.com from January 17. The launch will be supported by Oatly’s largest UK digital media buy campaign across broadcast VOD (Sky, All4 and ITV Hub), a programmatic VOD (YouTube), display ads and a social VOD (Facebook & Instagram). The typically Oatly OOH component will run from January 17 to 30 in London, Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow as well as on thousands of buses around the UK for four weeks. The campaign is also planned to launch across Europe over the next few weeks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands and Australia. Oatly has also partnered with The Guardian across print, display and audio channels. There will be an Observer magazine cover wrap and advertorials plus display takeovers, sliding doors and 30-second audio podcast ads.
Credits:
Creative Agency: Oatly Department of Mind Control
Creative director: Michael Lee
Production company: Nexus Studios
Director: Conor Finnegan
