Is it a greek (oatgurt) tragedy, a bromance triangle gone wrong or a 5-minute long product shot? The pilot episode of THE NEW NORM&AL SHOW, Norm’s Old Pal Milk, explores how making the decision between a lifelong friendship and saving the planet isn’t easy for anyone, unless you’re an oat drink carton puppet called Norm…

After spending a few years championing the post-milk generation amongst hipsters, vegans and those living a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, our focus shifted to the challenge of persuading a more mainstream crowd -- an essential group to get onboard the plant-based movement if we are to make any kind of dent in the climate crisis, but also a group who are less engaged with sustainable issues and more likely to roll their eyes at any do-good-pro-planet propaganda. Our non-preachy message to do plant-based on your own terms felt like an easy first step for people to take, but we wanted an approach that even the surliest consumers could get into… So, we enlisted a couple of puppets to deliver our message, because, well who doesn’t love puppets?

Nobody likes change. It’s scary and uncomfortable and lame. And even though plant-based is fast becoming “the new normal” in many pockets of society, saying it out loud kind of feels less triumphant and more, well, Darth Vadar-ish... So, when a little ampersand came down from the sky to transform The New Normal into THE NEW NORM&AL SHOW, we knew we had the perfect Trojan horse for calling plant-based the new normal without calling plant-based the new normal, if that makes any sense.

Norm & Al don’t have all the answers (oat drink carton puppets rarely do). They are struggling to navigate the world of plant-based eating, just like the rest of us. And in order to maximize engagement with the failures, successes and more failures of our puppet heroes, we decided to create a full 15 minutes of puppet show content spread over a 5 part mini-series.

THE NEW NORM&AL SHOW was designed as a kind of plant-based conversion therapy for milk drinkers. Our target focused on 18+ dairy drinkers across Europe with an objective to entertain and provoke positive discussions around the plant-based movement.

The same people who told us that no one would read our super long IG captions or our long-winded OOH headlines also told us that nobody would watch 5-minute long episodes of a puppet show from a Swedish oat drink company. Our digital first campaign was anchored by hubs on Oatly.com as well as our YouTube channel featuring a Netflix style player with all 5 episodes of THE NEW NORM&AL SHOW. A series of 15s, 20s and 30s show teasers were created to run across social, digital and VOD channels and drive interest to the hubs, where people could watch and share the full-length episodes. To generate extra excitement for the show, we also ran high-impact OOH placements in prominent cities across Europe. A comprehensive PR, podcast and influencer strategy including an editorial piece in the Guardian, aimed to prolong the plant-based discussion even further.

Our mission with Norm & Al was to plant a plant-based seed into the heart of mainstream UK. We managed to reach 94% of our 18-44 target audience exposing 35% of the entire UK, or 23 million people, to our puppet heroes. Average dwell time on THE NEW NORM&AL SHOW hub on Oatly.com reached a record 14 minutes and 12 seconds, which largely meant that most people stuck around to watch all 5 episodes. All of this led to an elevation of the debate around plant-based, with a 93% increase in comments vs. the same period last year when we ran one of our most provocative campaigns ever, Help Dad. Though we are used to stirring up noise both good and bad, this time around, over 90% of the comments for our puppet show landed either neutral or positive, which for us feels strange, but good.