What Oreos Teach Us About Success
(update from an article published last year on Technorati)
In the battle for brand domination, the worst thing a brand can do is rest on its laurels. Brands must innovate through R & D, enhance product and be flexible and ready for "in the moment" marketing via Social.
A lot can be learned from a brand that was popular with our great, great, great, great grandparents' generation and is currently beloved in 100 countries today. What can marketers learn from the 101 year-old Oreo cookie? Keep current, be social and have fun with marketing your product. Fun is connective, interactive. It turns consumers into fans and fans into super loyalists who are always engaged, sharing, promoting and eating Oreos.
Oreos' sustained popularity is due to its focus; they a)provide a great product, b)tweak its use through a thematic marketing campaigns (Three ways to eat oreos: dunking, separating, biting.) which continue their threads on Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and the brand's updated website (which has apps, games and videos). Once these two things are present, loyal, engaged fans end up selling the product themselves by making thematic threads their own and morphing them through Social shares and enhancements via Youtube videos, i.e. making Oreo vegan cupcakes, using Oreos to create new recipes, or separating Oreos, a clever campaign using outrageous mechanics and in one instance a robot to separate an Oreo.
Separating Oreos is trending on Youtube. One video (The Slingshot Channel) has received one million views: an Oreo Separation Pump Gun splits an Oreo. The first video in the series initiated by Oreo (there are #5) is of physicist David Neevel's mechanical Oreo separator machine (4 million views). Video #6 is of an agent provocateur blowing up an Oreo which is a real tweak on the theme and not popular because there is no Oreo left to eat. What's the point?
Oreo is current evidenced during its 100 year celebration last year with the help of consumers, creating Ads in real time. They are thinking out of the box with their latest being the "Wonderfilled" campaign going live on the streets of NYC, LA and Chicago as singer/songwriter Owl City joined by hundreds of singers wondered what would happen if they gave an Oreo to commuters. Oreo's "Wonderfilled" Song is on Youtube and versions are on its website. Creators of the campaign chose the concept of wonder as “something the brand could own.” We will probably see this thread used in future campaigns, apps, etc; it's already being shared on the most popular social platforms.
The attitude of brand sustainability is best summed up by Janda Lukin, director for Oreo at Mondelez in NJ. Although “we were delighted” with the response to the birthday campaign last year, Ms. Lukin said, “we always look to see how we can evolve and engage with our fans. No resting on laurels for the most popular cookie in the world.
UPDATE
Taken from their Facebook page...they're making it into Transformers with their "DUNKSPLOTIONS" is a perfect illustration of their pushing to the limits. Would ALL COMPANIES...do this? Perhaps we'd be facing different issues than what we're facing now. Who knows...they are inspired and they keep inspiring us with them and having fun. There is a lot you can learn from a cookie!
