WHAT WOULD OATLY DO?

OAT COUTURE: FUTURE OF TASTE Oatly is a plant-based milk company that has built its brand around sustainability, health, and ethical consumption. Its challenge is that cultural expectations are shifting faster than traditional market research can track. Global flavor cycles and digital micro-trends move at breakneck speed.


For Oatly to stay relevant, it must navigate this fragmented landscape to better understand the market and future. Instead of relying on lagging consumer reports, the company blends expert insight from baristas and makers with real-time digital behavior via its Culture Lab, mapping cultural flows rather than static preferences. Through tools like seasonal lookbooks, signature drinks, and their Future of Taste Report, Oatly transforms emerging signals into tangible prototypes and stories. Link to Oatly lookbook example

FOATLY: FROM OAT MILK TO IDENTITY

Oatly started as an oat milk brand in a category that barely existed not long ago, yet quickly became the global market leader. Early on, the brand tapped into sustainability, ethical consumption, health, and social media–driven movements with a bold, provocative tone. Oat milk became more than a functional product; it became a mindset and an identity for consumers who care about wellness and the planet. That success also changed the rules for staying relevant. Once a product becomes part of identity, innovation can no longer follow the logic of the supermarket. Oatly began to think more like a fashion brand than a food brand, realizing that traditional sales and checkout data only show where consumers were months ago—not where they will be in the year ahead.

THE CULTURE LAB AND REAL-TIME CULTURAL FLOWS

To stay ahead, Oatly searched for real-time cultural intelligence and created The Culture Lab: a global platform that connects daily with baristas around the world. These baristas operate at the front lines of consumption and notice early shifts in taste, usage, questions from customers, and new combinations—whether oat milk in coffee, matcha, or entirely new drinks. Oatly treats this network as a system of “antennas,” tapping into behind-the-scenes, local, physical knowledge and then validating it with near-real-time digital signals. TikTok videos, Google searches, comments, and reviews are used to confirm whether local observations point to broader cultural flows. The goal is not to chase trends, but to identify larger movements around wellness, functional ingredients, new fibers, and so-called “destination drinks” worth going out of one’s way for.

PROTOTYPES, STORYPOWER, AND FEELING THE FUTURE

Instead of lengthy research reports, Oatly translates these insights into strongly visualized concepts: prototypes, photoshoots, and periodic lookbooks that echo the logic of fashion. These are shared back with the barista network and partners to test emotional resonance, not just rational appeal. Oatly believes people don’t buy something simply because it is new, but because it fulfills a need, solves a problem, or resonates emotionally as an experience. By using story-driven artifacts—what they call StoryPower—Oatly allows consumers, colleagues, and partners to step into emerging flows and futures. Only ideas that gain real traction are scaled, ensuring innovation is grounded in lived experience rather than wishful trend thinking.

Ask yourself:

• What network could you involve to better understand emerging behaviors at the cultural edge?

• In what way can you manifest and validate upcoming trends with prototypes?

• How can you apply storypower to let colleagues immerse themselves into these new trends, habits, needs, and underlying values?