Local artists hand-painted Oatly packages in anamorphic perspectives on objects chosen to both look natural in the city landscape and a bit misplaced at the same time. We then placed the objects (a pallet with boxes, a porta-potty, and a van) with the distorted pictures in front of walls with our messages spray painted on them, creating the illusion of complete murals with the products either complementing or altering the message, stopping pedestrians in their tracks when they suddenly ended up at the right angle. Placing the objects in one take for the documentation was, in itself, a craft.

When preparing our first campaign in France, we learned that the city of Paris only accepts murals from brands if they are ‘artistically’ made and don’t feature products or company logos. It’s important to follow the rules, we thought to ourselves, but we also wanted to give the Parisians a proper introduction to Oatly as a norm-challenging brand.

Oatly had been available in France for a while but never done a proper campaign to let people know about it – it was time to let the people of France know what kind of company Oatly is and that we had arrived.

The brief was to create a site-specific and local campaign that would reach far beyond the borders of Paris.

The campaign had two related objectives. The first was increased brand awareness, proven by the second objective of increased sales.

The documentation quickly became our most shared, liked, and commented posts to date, or as brands put it, the walls went viral. Sales in France boosted to 28% over the average of the preceding three months.

The art direction included:

- Idea development and internal/external presentation.

- Choosing the right walls and objects.

- Preparing the site and object-specific sketches.

- Directing the painting of everything in collaboration with the local artists.

The walls needed to be in public places where most people would automatically end up at the right angle for the illusion to happen. The objects needed to feel natural in the city landscape while attracting people’s attention, and finally, the walls needed to have a distinct Oatly feel outside of the illusion or if someone would steel or remove the objects.