Off Brand
How Oatly Outsmarted the Super Bowl by Being as Annoying as Possible
The oat milk brand played meta-level advertising jujitsu
Ads are annoying. And every year a surprising number of Super Bowl ads are super-annoying. This weekend’s game was no exception, but one of the most annoying ads took things to a new level — by commoditizing everyone else’s annoyance.
The ad consists of Oatly CEO Toni Petersson playing a keyboard alone in a field, singing a ridiculous ditty about his company’s oat milk. “It’s like milk, but made for humans,” he sings. “Wow, wow, no cow.” Petersson has a kind of annoying alt-dad look, and an undeniably annoying singing voice. So the ad is very annoying, seeming to last much longer than its 30-second slot. And it was immediately one of the most-despised ads of the game, which is saying something.
Predictably, the Twitterati could not resist declaring their annoyance, thus obediently amplifying the ad’s impact in the process. But that was just the beginning of Oatly’s marketing jujitsu.
