Oatly appears to be joining the first-timers club with a Super Bowl commercial

It’s game time for Oatly, which appears to be in the Super Bowl — and on U.S. broadcast TV — for the first time. The Swedish oat milk brand is typically a much smaller advertiser, relying on out-of-home ads in the U.S. Now, it seems that it will be jumping onto advertising’s biggest stage with a 30-second commercial. It would be a huge leap in marketing for the brand, which does lots of word-filled out-of-home displays it creates in-house but hasn't used national TV in the U.S. to promote its oat-based products. The brand posted a t-shirt that reads "I totally hated that Oatly commercial" on its U.S. site. “The rules of time and space make it impossible to give you back the 30 seconds you just spent watching our Super Bowl commercial, but at least we can give you this free t-shirt that lets the world know where you stand on our attempt to promote Toni’s singing skills to a wider audience,” Oatly posted on its site. “Feel free to wear it proudly knowing we are not offended since we believe that having different opinions on things is what helps move society forward, even if those particular opinions are strong enough for you to want to wear them in t-shirt form.” If Oatly indeed has a national in-game ad, that would make it the 22nd confirmed first-time Super Bowl advertiser in 2021. That’s twice as many as there were in the 2020 game. On average, between 2010 and 2019 there were eight new advertisers in the game. Oatly did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The brand has not run TV commercials in the U.S., according to data available from iSpot. Last month, it released a U.K. campaign showing teens shaming their parents for their consumption of dairy milk. Oatly isn’t the only oat milk maker trying to get viewers’ attention today. Chobani plans to run an existing 15-second spot for its oat milk on local CBS stations in 11 markets including Tampa, where the game is being played. And in dairy product news, Danone’s Oikos, the official NFL sponsor in the yogurt category, is running a commercial before the game and during the livestream, not during the TV broadcast of the game itself. Oatly, founded in Sweden in the 1990s, is a newer entrant to the non-dairy category in the U.S., arriving in late 2016. In early 2017, it was available in just 15 U.S. coffee shops. Now, it’s a go-to brand for many baristas and has expanded into other products such as frozen dessert, its term for non-dairy ice cream. In July, Oatly got $200 million in equity to fund its growth plans from investors led by Blackstone Group and including Oprah Winfrey, Natalie Portman, and former Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz, among others.

Oatly appears to be joining the first-timers club with a Super Bowl commercial

Featured Stories