Oreo is an iconic biscuit brand with leading edge digital platforms and a highly engaged fan base in Facebook. They developed a brilliant creative idea that combined the best of PR with social media and digital production to win a Cyber Lions Grand Prix, millions of new fans and hundreds of millions of new exposures. In this Cannes Lions social media case study we show you why…
Brand: Oreo | Sector: FMCG, Food and Beverage | Country: US and global | Objective: Brand awareness, brand favourability, brand equity | Format: PR and social media
For their 100th birthday Oreo wanted to boost front of mind awareness, create talkability that would build brand equity, and extend their fan base further. For a long established brand, this was an opportunity to capitalise on today’s culture and use digital channels to show their relevancy to today’s consumers.
The massive social media presence Oreo has created allows it instant access to a community of more than 30 million brand adorers. Through this it can reach a potential network for hundreds of millions of consumers through a combination of the viral effect of content and the range of sponsored placements Facebook offers for promoting the reach of a message.
Similarly Oreo’s leverage of Twitter and other social platforms has created an ecosystem of owned media that naturally lend themselves to being at the heart of always-on marketing. The smart fusion of PR and social media creates a big opportunity for Oreo if the brand can develop ideas that are truly viral. Their success makes them a Cannes Lions social media case study that will be relevant for many years.
The big idea was a massive PR and social media campaign to put an Oreo “twist” on daily events. This 100 day online campaign – called the ‘Daily Twist’ – saw Oreo create highly topical content based on the day’s biggest news story or key word trends, and release a new piece of content each day through its social channels. 100 pieces of content published across 100 days fuelled their owned digital media ecosystem. The topics ranged from turning the brand into pictures of iconic music stars to creating on-screen versions of iconic computer games – but putting the brand into the heart of the game.
Oreo unlocked an explosion of social conversation. Facebook audiences rose by over 1 million and shares rose by 280%. This helped generated the equivalent of 231 million media impressions and gave the brand the highest overall buzz increase in 2012 (+49).
Daily Twist is a great example of feeding your social media platforms with topical and engaging always-on branded content. Oreo built their brand through paid TV advertising, but had the foresight to evolve their marketing approach to embrace digital channels effectively. They’re now a key part of modern popular culture, and the topicality of their postings drives daily relevance and engagement. Within a 100 days the campaign had unlocked a stepchange in the level of talkability of the brand, proving the scale of what’s possible with the right idea and the right richness of creative execution. Oreo are fully leveraging their digital ecosystem of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and the Oreo hub site, proving to other brands how well designed ecosystems can effectively amplify content.
