Insight
The nostalgia of Oreo’s “twist, lick and dunk” ritual was a long-running campaign that always brought a smile to consumers. As parent company Mondelēz was looking to refresh its marketing efforts, the goal became to broaden from family connections and moments around the table with milk (which will always be core to the brand) and reach a broader audience with a more universal message.
For its 100th anniversary, Oreo featured the first-ever social media campaign to tap into contemporary culture, in real time and on a daily basis with the “OREO Daily Twist.” The content series reminded consumers of the everyday delight OREO can bring by sharing our “twist” on the day, and ultimately made the brand part of pop culture. Oreo had people’s attention - it just needed to maintain it.
Strategy
Thanks to the leap in this new content approach, Oreo wanted to leverage the brand’s burgeoning iconic status by buying a :30 spot for the Super Bowl — and then amplifying it with an earned social media campaign. Expectations were high from the client and consumers for Oreo to deliver stand-out, talked-about creativity — fitting for an iconic brand — on arguably the most competitive night for advertising in America.
With a minimal budget to leverage on a full-fledged social campaign, the brand created and led a game day ‘war room’ to win the event’s earned media wars with the owned assets. On Starcom MediaVest's recommendation, the client, brand, and digital agencies worked in tandem to quickly find a way to amplify consumer conversations — especially with Millennials — and lift Oreo above the day’s ceaseless social chatter. Together, they began to determine the best approaches to have Oreo react to events, situations and consumer feedback in real-time. Then the unimaginable happened: the lights went out during the game.
Execution
Oreo responded to this unexpected power failure with lightning fast creativity that ignited a brand conversation in real time and became the top trending topic on social media. Within 20 minutes of the power outage, it became the first branded post about the blackout. Oreo tweeted, “Power Out? No Problem.” along with a photo of the cookie in the dark and the headline: “You can still dunk in the dark”. They were the first of several brands to respond and their execution was praised for its clever, spot-on connection to the brand.
Results
Prepardness paid off. The execution earned re-tweets from influences such as @Associated Press, @WallStreetJournal and @Adweek, resulting in 175 million earned impressions ($8.6m media value) and attention and fame above and beyond just the :30 second paid spot.
In Q1 of 2013, sales tracked +8% vs. YAG, 80% higher than its goal of +5%. And, the conversation about the campaign continues. It was named one of the best social media efforts of the year and was featured on the ABC News special, “The Year”, which chronicled the biggest stories of 2013.