Oatly
Brand name
Oatly Group AB
Description
A food company that produces alternatives to dairy products from oats
Founded
1994
Headquarters
Malmo, Sweden
Creative business transformation leader
John Schoolcraft
Global Chief Creative Officer
Recognising triggers of creative application
In 2013, newly-appointed Oatly CEO, Toni Petersson, hired John Schoolcraft as Chief Creative Officer. Petersson gave Schoolcraft full control over the Oatly brand customers saw and experienced. For his part, Schoolcraft brought an outsider’s perspective to the company by viewing the brand through the lens of the consumer. He integrated members of the creative team in every strategic function across the organisation in order to generate creative solutions to business problems.
It was only through creativity that Oatly could transform. Twenty years after its founding, Oatly was still a niche organic food processing company. Annual sales were just more than $20 million and growth was nonexistent. Brand awareness was less than 0.5%. The company did not simply have a desire to improve, but it needed to transform to continue its existence.
Turning promise into value
Schoolcraft’s creative team was the very definition of agility. Ideas were taken to market immediately, without months of pre-testing or other trappings of a “traditional” marketing organisation. If an idea worked it was scaled. If not, they tried something else.
As CCO, Schoolcraft didn’t require buy-in from his CEO, though he did ultimately have veto power. Schoolcraft created a vision encompassing a cultural movement focused on connecting with people. This vision did not just connect with customers, it connected with the CEO, who gave Schoolcraft the freedom to create this change.
Harnessing exponential growth
The trust put into Schoolcraft by the CEO did not mean that Schoolcraft needed to go at this transformation alone. On the contrary, Oatly’s CEO became one of his most important collaborative partners.
In the words of Schoolcraft,
“Toni would come in and try to “ruin” something we made by engaging in all kinds of conversation, and in doing so he always make the work better, because there was trust there. We knew he had great thoughts about creative work, and he knew we were better than he was at executing that work and vision. And when that happens, when you can have such an open and frank relationship, that’s where you can push each other to places you didn’t expect to be.”
This collaboration allowed Oatly to communicate with its customers through a unified and distinctive voice. Oatly engaged with customers not as a brand always looking to sell something, but rather as a group of real people, helping other people (consumers) make a few changes in their lives for the better.
Transformational results
