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Comment by esperent | Hacker News Reader

Regarding the Oatly ad at the top (Another ad for our oat drink providing no reason at all why you should try it), this ad does have a signal. It's a humblebrag. It's saying, our product is so well known, and the reasons for using it so obvious, that we don't need to say anything. It's cementing Oatly brand in the minds of anyone who already thinks that they should be switching to non-dairy milk for any reason (health, environment, etc).

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It's I think what we used to call "brand advertising".

Just like random "coca-cola" billboards at the side of a road or a sports stadium

I once read an article that said basically that some ads were targeted at people who had already bought the product, to prevent regret for paying a premium price. The example given was TV commercials for BMW cars but I can see that applying with the oat milk drink.

So the regret increases the premium! Funny when you think about it.

The version I head was they're placed to remind you that you made a good choice, and for your next car, you should make the same good choice.

Also that it is the drink of nonconformists and creatives. Many of their other ads cross way over into tryhard cringe for how "random" they are.

Tryhard cringe for us, but likely very funny and edgy to, say, 5-10 year olds. It wouldn’t surprise me if there wasn’t an attempt to center Oatly for coming generations as an investment.

It's funny and edgy for adult segments as well, unfortunately. Advertising works.

It looks like it's in Vienna ("gewista"), but is delivering its huge vacuous message in English.

I wish someone did an analysis of their marketing. I really hope it was a huge flop because it’s just awful.

I despise their horrible advertising and marketing copy in general and I sometimes just have to tell myself, “it’s just oat milk no need to boycott it because some edgy marketing consultant forces you to read their nonsense”.

It's in your head. Someone did something right.

hmm after some research I'm inclined to believe that 1) oatly is the best tasting product on the market, 2) it's the distribution channels that was the success, not the marketing copy, and 3) spending massive amounts of capital into growth of a good product will always yield growth.

So no... I stand by what I said, I think they did a lot of things wrong in the marketing department, in spite of having a really solid product.

agree..

The ad is basically saying "You consumers don't know how to use your brains and will buy our brand just because we showed a picture of it". Terrible.

Not really, it’s more of a brag about how oatly has fully solidified itself as _the_ choice for so many, basically like Nutella

Nope. It builds on prior exposure to Oatly marketing in other channels, which they famously are good at.

The market for oat milk consumers mostly consists of people that had actively made a choice about drinking oat milk already.

To me it looks like a parody of advertising in general which rarely provides reasons.

Gen-X doesn’t want to be manipulated.

Millennial advertising doesn’t adhere to 20th century advertising norms.

Gen-X is getting older and needs fiber and to lose weight, so they respond to “oats”.

Millennials and Gen-Z want healthy-looking drinks that are trendy and fun, because they’ll never be able to pay off their college loans and grew up during a time where politics were divided and assume we may all die from global warming and WW3 so they just want to be healthy and happy.

This ad is trying to say, “We’re not going to say this is healthy, or will make you feel free, or is a fast meal substitute. It’s just oat milk.”

That pretty much appeals to all of them.

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