Oreo Crispy & Thins : The promotion process
This semester, in the framework of Ad and PR lab: Applied Marketing, co ordinated by Betty Tsakarestou and Diana Birba, my team, the “ACE” creative agency, was assigned to find creative ways of promoting a new product of Oreo brand, the Oreo Crispy & Thins, and further growing of the brand’s sales in overall.
Oreo Crispy & Thins is a twist of the classic, sandwich Oreo cookie except it is thinner and crispier with a thin layer of cream filling. Oreo is well known for it’s playful character yet Oreo Crispy & Thins addresses to a new target group than the usual, which is adults, healthy, watching the waistline. It also addresses to females aged from 25 to 45 who seek progression and an enhanced quality of life. In overall, it moves from the family moments which Oreo uses to invest on, to more personal moments answering to the requirements of the new target group. This new product is characterized as sophisticated yet it does not lose it’s playfulness.
So the challenge for us was to find some ways of promoting this new product to these new customers. But before we could implement this step, we had to do an extended research on the market and on Oreo’s marketing strategy in specific. In this way we were able to detect the brand’s equity, it’s strengths and it’s weaknesses as well as the competitors we are dealing with. Having accomplished that, we would be able to gain an understanding of how consumers want the product to be delivered to them and what they would expect.
Initialy, we designed the Golden Circle of Oreo Crispy & Thins. We needed to understand why Oreo does what it does, how it does it and then what it does. Oreos directional principle is that playful, creative and wild imagination makes us happy, while a balanced treat makes us feel less guilty when we eat a snack. Oreo Thins are combining the idea that we don’t need demureness in our lives but a slight bite of sophisticated craziness. That’s why slighter biscuits! That’s why Oreo Thin!
On that note, in terms of how Oreo manages that, the answer is with a twist on the classic cookie. The innovation compared to the variety of the Oreo products and to competitors, is based on the balanced texture between the cream filling and the round-shaped wafers, which are thinner but in the same form and dimensions as the classic Oreo cookies.Consequently, the answer to the “what” of the golden circle is the Oreo Crispy & Thins! The new product is the absolute suggestion for adults as it covers their needs and desires,
In the next step, we did some research on Oreo’s competitors in Greece. We found that the main competitors are “Papadopoulou” company and “Kit-Kat”. Papadopoulou in particular, would be a considerable competitor for Oreo cookies considering that the company is the leader in the biscuit industry and a strong player in the bread substitute segment in Greece. It provides a wide range of products but the classic sandwich cookie caught our attention as it seems to have little difference compering to Oreo cookies.
Well, having in mind the environment of the market as well as Oreo’s strategy of promoting, which is highly based on content creation, we would procceed with our own plan. We came up with a four-parts plan and a new slogan -It’s Crispy. It’s Thin. It’s an Oreo Dream-, aiming to deliver the new idea to the new consumers but also improve Oreo’s sales. We wanted to stay as loyal as possible to the brand’s equity but also to improve some elements.
Consequently, our first suggestion was that Oreo’s Youtube channel should be updated. Youtube platform is continuously gathering audience, especially when it comes to videos uploaded by people with great impact, the so called influencers. We wanted to take advantage of that impact by uploading cooking challenges hosted by influencers. In these cooking videos, the recipes will have as one the ingredients Oreo cookies, some of them will be low fat. Also, we want to reveal the playfulness of the consumers by challenging them to try the recipes at home or even on real time through some challenges that we would like to organize at crowded places and further upload on Youtube and other social media.
Our second suggestion, was that we would organise a product sharing using a drone: “Imagine a drone coming slowly towards you with a hanging gift bag saying « Grab me!» and having the Oreo Thin slogan «It’s Crispy! It’s Thin! It’s an Oreo Dream!». You take the gift bag, you open it and you see 2 Oreo Vanilla 96gr boxes and 2 IC formats Vanilla 48gr. An Oreos’ promoter is coming towards you and conglatulates you for winning the gift bag. They also ask you to take a picture with them which will be uploaded on the Oreos’ Social Media with the hashtag #AnOreoDream.”
To keep going, we would suggest that a distribution of free products should be carried outside of famous cosmetic stores. The idea is that the promoters should approach as many women ( about 25–45 years old) as possible when they leave or enter the beauty stores. What promoters will do is simple! They will treat the target group with an IC format Vanilla 48gr Oreo Thin package. Every package would be accompanied with a post-it with our slogan written on it and a smiley emoji.
Last but not least, in order to increase Oreos’ sales we came up with a card game that will be distributed for free by buying a specific number of Vanilla 96gr packages. The idea is that the board game is included free in limited edition packages as long as the campaign is running. Winning is determined by a player’s ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions that people 18+ years old is more luckily to know and that’s why it’s name will be “Who knows better”. Whenever you are with your friends or your family and you want to have a dessert we suggest that you eat Oreo Crispy & Thins while playing our funny card game.
In conclusion, our entire plan is based on the AIDA model. We seek to raise awareness for the new product, make the customers interested to it, build a desire and then pursuade them to buy it.
The ACE creative agency : Katerina Tsigarida Danai Kontitsi Xenia Ntavranoglou
Our presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/ssuser49af1e/oreos-presentationfinal
