Taste Test

Our plant-based family at Oatly came to us with the idea of a taste-test series with a man-on-the-street vibe, to promote their new dairy-free frozen dessert bars. Two US cities, give people a taste, ask what they thought. Simple, right? No.

Three challenges stood in the way. It needed to feel like a multi-stop road trip on only two locations. The hit-rate on truly wonderful takes was always going to be low, so we had to over-shoot our way to gold. And a heat wave set its sights on our shoot window, threatening to melt the star of the show.

So we built a map. We found the main attraction in a given area, then dug for its obscure, esoteric offerings, and grouped the strongest into clusters. That pointed us to Miami and Austin, the combination that gave us the range of people and places we wanted at a frozen-dessert-appropriate climate. Then we employed an ancient producing maxim, become friends with everyone, and rigged a chest freezer with a relay of coolers to keep roughly 1,000 bars reliably icy on 100-plus degree days.

We still have no idea what’s in those bars.