Oat Cult lives up to its name as it joins sacrilegious trend

Oat Cult has joined a spate of brands including KFC after embracing occult imagery.

Oat Cult's launch film for its new Tiramisu flavour is deliberately mysterious, rejecting almost every breakfast ad convention. Look away, Tony the Tiger.

Created by Thingy & Thingy and directed by Mike Upson through MindsEye, the film transports viewers to 15th-century Italy where villagers become obsessed with a mysterious hole in the ground that rewards sacrifice with eruptions of tiramisu-flavoured oats.

It's unhinged and theatrical yet familiar, mirroring KFC's recent surreal campaign arc, seen in 'Believe in Chicken' and its predecessor 'All Hail Gravy'. Created by Mother London, KFC's spots also leaned into grand, pseudo-religious mythology.

The narrative

Oat Cult’s film centres around a local group becoming enraptured by a supernatural pit which inexplicably spews up tiramisu. 

The villagers offer the pit their possessions and devotion, only to be rewarded by showers of coffee-and-chocolate overnight oats, which, to be fair, sounds pretty tasty. 

The black-and-white cinematography turns a flavour launch into something resembling a lost European arthouse horror film as Oat Cult chooses distinctiveness over explanation. This approach is akin to Liquid Death’s insistence that audiences remember the vibe, rather than overtly plugging the product. Or as founder Ben da Costa noted: "The entire point of building our own brand was never having to put an idea like this in front of a marketing director."

The campaign also reflects a growing backlash against founder-content culture. Da Costa has previously argued that brands should still invest in craft, ideas, directors and production value rather than relying entirely on "building in public" and founder-led social content. This film is something of a manifesto for that philosophy.

Credits

Brand: Oat Cult
Agency: Thingy & Thingy
Director: Mike Upson
Production: MindsEye