GoKawiilOatly's creative director says the company deliberately skips a brand book
Oatly creative director Michael Lee says the company has long refused to create a standard brand book, the style guide most large companies use to keep messaging consistent. He says new creative hires are told to 'unlearn everything you know about marketing,' and the company instead gives its creative team unusual autonomy to write and execute its own briefs. Oatly's shift traces back to 2012, when new CEO Toni Petersson and creative chief John Schoolcraft rebuilt the marketing department around creatives rather than traditional marketing structures.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
Lee's comments suggest that rigid brand guidelines, while useful for consistency, can constrain the kind of unpredictable, human tone that made Oatly's packaging and advertising stand out. This approach implies that maintaining creative distinctiveness becomes harder as a company scales, since more stakeholders and partners typically push toward standardization. Other brands wrestling with growth versus creative risk may see Oatly's structure as a case study, though the source doesn't say whether this approach is replicable elsewhere.
- Oatly avoids a formal brand book to preserve creative flexibility across partnerships and campaigns.
- New creative hires are told to 'unlearn everything you know about marketing.'
- The company's creative-first structure dates to 2012 under CEO Toni Petersson and CCO John Schoolcraft.
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Published there as: “How Oatly Became a Creative Force, by Breaking All of Marketing’s Rules”
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