Oatly takes out ad in The Guardian to mock 'desperately out of touch' parents about pronouns in email signatures

[theskyispink]

twitter.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1355862358728597507/photo/1

Take a drink - another drinks company goes ultra-woke.

Snort

Is this aimed at teens? If so my DS is as far removed from vegan as you can get, throws away his body weight in single use plastic every week, drinks a tonne of cows milk, and has probably never even heard of the Guardian.

Not all of which I particularly approve of, however, he definitely wouldn't be buying it. I don't really fancy it now either, thanks all the same.

Oh and if you're reading, Oatly marketing, pronouns are on their way out. Very few of my DS' age group are using them anymore.

I love Oatly but their latest campaign is weird and misjudged. It’s all aimed at teenagers and is attacking various things, for example they are attacking dairy farmers in one advert. I don’t have dairy (or meat but not full vegan) but I don’t agree with this at all. It’s not clever marketing to me it’s extremely off putting. They’ve made a big mistake with this latest campaign.

@ByGrabtharsHammerWhatASavings

I think oatly is rank personally. It's the worst for splitting in tea and isn't fortified with B12 like other brands. They're just desperately trying to claw back woke points after the whole Blackstone fiasco. It's so transparent I'm actually cringing for them.

Is that the organic version, maybe? I've noticed before that organic almond and soya milk from other brands is never fortified with calcium or B12. I assume regulations don't permit it.

TBH I'm starting to wonder if these companies are doing it on purpose to get free advertising via these long threads on MN. Because they're all companies selling vegan products. But why the fuck do they think it's ok to drive a wedge between adults and parents? Question 5 bothers me the most, I think.

Overall the whole concept of "wokest advertising"/getting free PR by embracing controversial political causes is exploitative of a world view that I highly doubt any big company actually subscribes to or why aren't they redistributing their profits to the homeless? Anyone with half a mind for critical thinking should be able to see right through it.

FWIW I'm 34 and have been vegan since about a decade before it was cool and I find the idea of telling people what pronouns to use offensive and infantile. A lot of mums of babies with CMPA are encouraged to buy Oatly Barista, but Alpro Growing Up Milk is cheaper and more widely available so I stick with that. Also I like that it has a giraffe on the box

I've just been re-reading through the ad linked by MissBarbary. It's odd.

Exactly who is it aimed at in the 21st century? I'm going to confess to once upon a time policing my parents' recycling as a passionate teenager armed with my Blue Peter Guide to Being Green, but that was in the late 90s when we didn't have doorstep recycling. (They said that if it was so important to me to recycle their newspapers, then I could lug the week's newspapers to the recycling bins at the supermarket. It was and I did. )

I don't know anyone of an age to be the parent of a Guardian-reading young adult who can't handle sticking glass jars in the recycling box. Or anyone who pays heating bills who is blasé about letting the heat out of an open window.

Am I the only one who is finding this quiz hilarious? Clearly aimed at Gen X Guardian-reading parents.

But yeah, the humour is a bit lame, like the Guardian these days, so it all works marketing-wise IMO.

@JumboShiitake

The comment on your son is really interesting - I do feel I'm picking up signs that things are changing with the new generation coming up. My own DD is pretty GC (she hadn't heard me discuss the issue so this didn't come from me) and quite often now I see comments on social media like "expected my 15 yr old to be really TRA but...."

There was also a Tweet somewhere where a young man said "in our school the boys let any girl who doesn't want to change in the "girls" room use ours and we all go outside". And generally the profile pics of objectors are getting younger and much more willing to complain about homophobia and so on. Generally thy look less "like me"!!!

It makes sense really. Nowadays the TRA viewpoint is the "establishment" view so rebelling against it would be the normal thing to do. And the whole "100 genders, anime photo, whacky pronouns" thing is maybe starting to look tiresome and self-indulgent.

Of course all this is necessarily a bit vague but I do feel something is happening.

Oh jeez, I saw that come up on FB and didn't realise it was Oatly. Bloody patronising and all the other comments seemed to think so too.
I'm vegan and was intending to give Oatly a try as I go through quite a bit of nondairy milk. Perhaps not, then.

If you search Oatly Guardian on twitter, the impressions are pretty unfavourable!

DDs can't criticise my green credentials- they are the ones wanting the heating turned up and leaving all the lights on. I go round turning all the lights off and turning the thermostat down

@PotholeParadies - just so - my son is the recycling meister in this house but I & my husband both do it - we are not twits and despite being in my ( ahem - let's just say 50s) I find some of those Oatly things a bit patronising . Isn't ageism meant to be a thing you can't do. ? Although my son did say the other evening he thinks ageism is one of the last things a lot of people worry about. ( Not him because he was the one who pointed it out - - just legally and to do with employment and - well shit like that , and ....)

I think it was a perfect partnership for the Guardian. Both as annoying as heck.

Biting the hand that feeds you, Oatly.

I, (a 47 year old woman) control the shopping in my household, not my teens.
Looks like my regular order of Oatly is permanently off the shopping list now. Will try the Lidl one instwad.

Does anyone know of an altenative for their “creme fraiche”? I will buy Elmea now i stead of their cream.

What is actually happening in the world that drinks companies feel they are in a position to 'educate' the masses on social issues. It's utterly baffling to me that they feel in a particular position to do this. I get the whole 'trying to sell a lifestyle/on brand mesaging' thing, but recently it's seemed to just go way beyond that.

Lightbulb moment

GC drinks company? We could print GC slogans and extracts from the Equalities Act on every carton?

What I’m finding very helpful about companies who mindlessly virtue signal is that it helps clue me in that they may not have anything substantive going on in terms of their corporate social responsibility, and they’re (consciously or not) deflecting from that.

With the controversies highlighted upthread, Oatly seem to be firmly in this camp.

It helps me find companies that actually do align with the relevant ethical values that I’m looking for: no palm oil in my peanut butter, fair trade in my coffee and sugar, no sweatshops in my clothing, no deforestation in my milk substitutes etc. Whether a beverage producer endorses my position on pronouns is utterly irrelevant. They can console themselves that I’m a hopeless dinosaur with no social conscience if they like, it’s their bottom line that will suffer when they find out they’re wrong!

That’s it - I’m cancelling my 15 year olds Guardian subscription!

Ooh thanks for the Oato recommendation - this has actually spurred me to start getting a milk delivery sorted out, we get through quite a lot of dairy & oat milk in this house and I like the idea of glass bottles!

How patronising! As a former English language teacher I can say that teenagers who know what pronouns are,are as rare as rocking horse shit - until now when they are all experts in wokeness.

And there's this

helps me find companies that actually do align with the relevant ethical values that I’m looking for: no palm oil in my peanut butter, fair trade in my coffee and sugar, no sweatshops in my clothing, no deforestation in my milk substitutes etc. Whether a beverage producer endorses my position on pronouns is utterly irrelevant

Yes - these are all the things I care about too. We can be dinosaurs together.

Meh. This is squarely aimed at me if I had a teenager (I actually have a toddler... as do most of my peer group friends) and I'm not offended. It's quite amusing. I know full well I'm the 'older' demographic now, that teens are massively different from when I was young, and have very different lives and concerns. It doubtless would be better for the environment and my health if I drank oat milk, but it's revolting so I'm not going to.

We all talk about how privileged boomers are and how they can't possibly understand the real world - this is just the next stage of the perennial misunderstood youth.

Oat milk is very easily made in a blender and a billion times cheaper. I can't imagine what kind of idiots would come up with this ad, given who is actually buying this overpriced product. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!

Teenagers, those well-known proponents of avoiding online shopping and drinking non-dairy milk products.

We also plan to boycott Oatly.
We are Guardian readers and don't appreciate being lectured at about wokeness.
We pay for the stuff not our teenagers! Oatly needs to decide who their target audience is. I think they will have pissed off a bunch of their customers with their sanctimoniousness.