The Milk Wars Test the Power of Marketing as a Climate Solution

Marketers have a critical role to play in shifting demand toward greener products—so the thinking goes.

But it’s becoming apparent that the higher-carbon status quo (cow’s milk) isn’t willing to give up market share to plant-based alternatives without a fight. Compounding that, legacy products like cow’s milk often have deeper pockets and a more well-established lobbying apparatus.

“What the milk industry is doing … it’s old fashioned,” said CB Bhattacharya, H.J. Zoffer chair in sustainability and ethics at the University of Pittsburgh. “With increasing consumer awareness of the impact of animals on climate change, I don’t think it’s going to stick. It’s, of course, David versus Goliath.”

As brands like Oatly convert more dairy drinkers to oat-based alternatives, industry groups like the Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP) and the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB) are firing back with campaigns targeting alternatives. How people respond indicates the role that sustainability-focused brands and advertisers can play in reducing demand-side carbon emissions.

Milk vs. plants

Unit sales of plant-based milk—which include alternatives made of soy, grains, nuts or vegetables—grew 19% between 2019 and 2022, according to the Good Food Institute. Milk from animals declined by 4% over the same period, with plant-based alternatives reaching 15% of total market share.

Oatly’s annual sustainability report highlights the emissions savings generated by converting dairy drinkers to oat milk drinkers. The brand helped people avoid 471,047 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions by switching to oat milk by the end of 2022, per the report.

“How can we go beyond selling products and engage people in a conversation about the food system?” asked Oatly chief sustainability officer Ashley Allen. “About why traditional dairy doesn’t work from so many perspectives—from a planetary perspective, from a climate perspective, from a nutrition perspective, from a health perspective—and engage people in that conversation on how plant-based milks can really be the difference?”

Last week, Oatly released a new video in its series, “Will It Swap?,” featuring a cozy supper club in small-town Wisconsin, where a crowd of midwesterners taste The Duck Inn supper club’s menu, with a twist—all of the milk has been subbed out for Oatly.

Regional outreach is part of Oatly’s efforts to reach beyond the coffee shops of Brooklyn and Los Angeles and into the homes of regular American dairy drinkers.

MilkPEP, the group behind the classic “Got Milk?” campaign, has responded to this rise of plant-based milk alternatives with pointed messaging wrapped in high production value and A-list talent.

The group released an ad early this year mocking nondairy milks with a parody about “wood milk” featuring White Lotus star Aubrey Plaza. An ad by CMPB also mocked milk alternatives through parody, listing absurd products like octopus or hot dog milk. More recently, MilkPEP dropped a spot starring Queen Latifah, formulated as a PSA calling out “milk shaming.”

“Our goal with our Queen Latifah spot was to shine a light on the absurdity of ‘milk shaming’ using humor while empowering milk drinkers (the majority of America) to feel proud,” said MilkPEP CEO and chief marketing officer Yin Woon Rani, adding that the dairy industry is making great progress on its climate footprint.

Oatly hasn’t shied away from the controversy that its ads generate. In Sweden, the “Ditch Milk” campaign became a nationwide debate, with politicians and pundits chiming in through op-eds and on talk shows.

“Any good effort to change the way things are done is going to provoke that tension,” Allen said, “making it a contest or conversation and not just a one-way communication.”

The power of behavior change

It’s important to note that fossil fuels, the main drivers of climate change, contribute the most to an individual’s carbon footprint. But food production also plays a role.

Climate solutions group Project Drawdown points to curbing food waste and switching to plant-based diets as the top two most impactful changes that households can make to curb their climate impact.

Because wealthy people in the U.S., U.K. and Europe are responsible for significantly more emissions on average than low-income people in the rest of the world, those people have the most impact through their transportation, food and fuel choices, according to a 2022 report from the United Nations’ panel on climate change.

Changing those consumption habits could save up to nine metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions per person, per the report. If those changes happened at scale with the support of policy changes and efficient tech, emissions could be rapidly cut by at least 5%.

“[Marketing professionals] have a lot of ability right now to influence people,” Bhattacharya said. “Are you going to use that power for good or not?”