of herds and men
"Not every man remembers the name of the cow
which supplied him with each drop
of milk he has drunk."
— Shmuel Yosef Agnon
And of course we don’t! Who could, actually? Not even those grown up on a farm. Or would they?
How distant has our perception really become from the original producer of the raw materials we consume to what we put in our mouths? Lawmakers, at least in the European Union, have made a giant leap over the last years in matter of traceability. Now we should know the origin of the production of the meat we eat and of the wine we drink. We rely on the fact that farmers have treated animals in certain ways to meet required standards (that sometimes are really not enough and too often are not respected). Though let’s say that progress is slowly making its way to give us a bit of consciousness, at least to some extent.
A rising trend shows a return to local consumption in the smaller towns and rural communities but it is also rapidly growing in the bigger cities. Many may not know this but in 2007 the New American Oxford Dictionary welcomed “locavore” as the Word of the Year.
locavore noun
lo·ca·vore | \ ˈlō-kə-ˌvȯr \
one who eats foods grown locally whenever possible
Who wouldn’t love to call themselves this? With no strings attached it sounds like an easier and more practical way to respect the cycles of nature without becoming a vegan, or at least without living on deprivation.
But people living in the city like myself, know how difficult such a choice might be, the costs of organic food still being inaccessible to most and dedicated shops being a minority, often nowhere to be found in our immediate neighbourhoods.
So can we come up with realistic and practical ways to recreate a truthful bond with the living creatures generously providing us with the food we eat?
Someone in Hoosick Falls, NY, apparently took the Agnon quote extremely seriously. An hour drive away from Pittsfield we end up in the middle of beautiful plains, characteristic of the lower New England. Here, on the edge of nowhere, we encounter Berle Farm, founded by Beatrice Berle in 1989. “If you became sixteen hundred pounds eating only grass, I’d be proud of you too” is Beatrice’s motto; which says pretty much about her relationship (and that of those working with her) with her cows.
"At Berle Farm, we spend a lot of time with cows. They are generous, ambitious, and steadfast. There aren’t many creatures that give more than they take but cows provide us with, milk, beef and easy companionship, while only taking grass. They also grow to be 1,500 pounds by just eating grass! If that’s not ambitious, we don’t know what is.”
Berle Farm’s Instagram account is a heavenly place of beauty and smiles, where the protagonists are of course Beatrice’s cows, which are thoroughly called by name. The names are then presented on the side of the yoghurt jars, listed as you would find them in the ending credits of a movie.
So, getting back to Agnon’s initial paradox: no, not every man (nor woman, from what I’ve heard) would remember the name of every cow which has supplied them with milk, though Berle’s intuition is a fine marketing strategy indeed, predicting the urge consumers feel to recreate a strong bond with the supply chain and to establish an individual relationship with their personal consumption.
Well, not everybody will go “Oh, sweet Myrtle has given me this fine milk”, but for sure giving cattle a name and a face on social media, will build a dimension of loyalty and some sort of gratefulness towards the living creatures that allow us to thrive each and every day.
***
But there are some who of course see this differently and who wouldn’t find Berle’s communication tricks any funnier than a lukewarm roast beef. Strict vegans, for example, refrain from consuming animal products such as meat, eggs, dairy products and any other animal-derived substances. This quite recent trend has led to flourishing new niches of market dedicated to the young and aware movement (“woke”, they would call themselves) by selling plant-based alternatives. Of course communication plays a decisive role for these brands, adapting to a more decisive and sometimes rebellious tone of voice that draws on a sense of belonging that is particularly strong in minorities. Someone, as it often happens, brought these traits to a new level and stood out (by far) over the others. But to introduce them, we’ll have to leave New England and move to the Old World.
I want to be very clear about this: everything you will read from now on is top-class fine marketing. Everything starts 1994 in Lund University, not far away from the Swedish city of Malmö (connected via the Øresund bridge to Copenhagen), where food scientist Rickard Öste and his brother Björn Öste founded a company producing alternatives to dairy products, made from oats. They called the brand Oatly.
I encountered an Oatly product almost four years ago for the first time and the packaging instantly blew my mind.
It was different from anything I’d ever seen before: with its naïve aesthetics and clumsy fonts, every centimetre of the milk carton served a specific communicative purpose. On one side I found a handwritten letter by a kid addressing Sweden’s prime minister, asking to reduce fossil fuel emissions. On the other side, guidelines on how to get your message featured on Oatly’s packaging:
“Start writing. It can be about absolutely anything, the weirder the better because people might find it interesting and actually start reading. Once you get them here, you have their interest so drop the nonsense and provide something of value or you might lose them. Like oats containing fibers (sic) called betaglucans (avoid big scientific mumbo-jumbo if possible) or that drinking oats is good for the planet (drop a cool fact like 69% fewer carbon emissions than milk). Now end this baby with something unexpected or just let the reader try to figure out what you were thinking, but that opinion can be rather risky.”
Which is exactly what they are doing! Who they? Well, the Department of Mind Control, which has replaced the traditional marketing department at Oatly. Why would they call themselves this? Because while traditional brands are desperately trying to become Lovemarks (still trendy though old and outdated), Oatly has positioned its narrative goal on founding a real cult, whose adepts will turn the future of humanity and its food from animal- to plant-based. WOW.
Yeah, WOW. Exactly what Toni Petersson - Oatly’s CEO - sang in the advert aired during the Super Bowl 2021: “WOW, NO COW”, while playing an electrical piano in the middle of an oat field. But the intro to the song is a rerun of Oatly’s historical and most controversial campaign payoff: “It’s like milk, but made for humans” which, if you think about it, might be one of the strongest copywriting in recent advertising history.
The underlying meaning of this statement is that you are not a true human being if you drink cow’s milk, since it’s not meant for you but for calves. A personal estimate (I’m sorry but I couldn’t find a more reliable source) is that over 99% of the world’s population drink cow’s milk rather than oat alternatives, this means that being human is in Oatly’s point of view a prerogative that belongs to a chosen few out of 7,7 billion.
As Beatrice Berle would say: “If that’s not ambitious, we don’t know what is”!
The Swedish dairy lobby LRF Mjölk successfully sued Oatly in 2014 for using the phrase "Milk, but made for humans" for 100,000 euros. In response to the lawsuit, Oatly published the legal documents, leading to an alleged 45% increase of Oatly's sales in Sweden.
But this is just one of the brand’s brilliant marketing actions.
From an article published on the website Livekindly and titled “Why Sweden Is Terrified of Oat Milk”:
“[…] dairy giant Arla launched a handful of anti-vegan milk television ads. One commercial sees a room full of dispirited workers drinking "Pjölk,” a made-up product (and imaginary term, deriving from the Swedish word for milk: “mjölk”) that is likely taking a swing at Oatly. At the end of the ad, a carton of Pjölk is punched off the screen as a vocalist sings, “Milk is milk.” It’s followed by the slogan: “Only milk tastes like milk.” […] Oatly responded to Arla’s commercials by trademarking the made-up words used by the dairy brand. The vegan company began printing the words — including Pjölk, Brölk, Sölk, and Trölk — on its packaging.”
And so on and so forth - it really seems that the disruptive communication of Oatly’s Department for Mind Control claims one victim after the other, recreating a strong human bond between the consumer and the raw material, subtly inviting them to join an elite minority of visionaries. "People want to talk to people. Not with logos.” states Toni Petersson and we can’t help but subscribing to this thought and Oatly’s effort to make the brand talk with the most human voice possible.
To give you a precise idea of where this company is at now, we are talking about 355 million euro in revenue for 2020 and with 800 employees worldwide. Oatly was also acknowledged by TIME Magazine as one of the top 100 influential companies of 2021.
During the days of the COP26 in Glasgow, a preview of an essay was presented in partnership with Oatly, called “Better Business Better Future” by Elisabet Lagerstedt (Founder and Principal of Future Navigators). It contains an analysis of a handful of brands (IKEA and Patagonia, among others, besides Oatly) explaining how these have been capable of turning huge companies into “good doers”. Oatly is here presented with its recent troubles that has caused them to lose trust from their affectionate audience:
“In 2016, state-backed China Resources, for instance, took a majority stake in the company through a joint venture with Belgium’s Verlinvest. In 2020, Blackstone invested an additional $200 million in the company, giving the firm a stake of about 10 percent. Blackstone was seen as an especially controversial move by climate and political activists who felt this left a sour taste. Oatly instead saw it as a great way to reroute ‘old’ capital into where it is most needed in building a better future.”
And although this Observatory is not a newspaper, nor I am a journalist, we have to point out that Blackstone Group has financed companies carrying out extensive deforestation in the Amazon, as well as driving road development into the depths of the jungle for export of foodstuffs. Which, to say the least, is not coherent with Oatly’s communication.
Although this not being the focus of our longform, in the spirit of transparency towards our readers we’ve dug into this document and this is what the sustainability strategy for 2029 of the Swedish Brand consists of:
WE WILL DRIVE A FOOD SYSTEM SHIFT
WE WILL SET THE EXAMPLE AS A FUTURE COMPANY
WE WILL LEAD THE CHARGE TO EMPOWER A PLANT-BASED REVOLUTION
As we all know, being listed on NASDAQ always represents a big risk undermining the soul of any brand.
Faithful to their initial mission, though: “turning the supply chain upside-down, from animal- to plant-based”, Oatly has deemed that this could not happen from the outskirts of Malmö. And that is actually right.
But coherence, as we all know, is crucial to meaningful communication. Restoring the trust of their audience should now be Oatly’s top priority.
***
Anyhow, as many might not agree nor like the juxtaposition, the Berle Farm case and the Oatly case are two sides of the same coin, both trying to recover a lost meaning in food and beverage consumption.
In both, the human accent is significant. For Beatrice Berle, giving a name and a face to the living creatures who we sacrifice for our own good is a way of re-establishing a relationship to nature’s cycle of life. While for Oatly, this relationship unravels through the very definition of a human being, where the consumer is no longer the hero of the narrative journey, but the product itself is, coming alive, glorified and elevated to a symbol of hope for a global change.
Whether vegan or not, we cannot refrain from admiring both forms of communication, for their bravery and joyfulness, for their seemingly honest effort to give back sense to this reckless consumerism we are drowning in. Maybe, also thanks to these excellent examples, we’ll be able to challenge the initially mentioned “Agnon’s paradox” and turn into locavores.
Or at least try to figure out a sexier word for it.
first appeared on Human Brands Observatory on November 10th 2021
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