Oreo: a smart cookie
Boasting 858K followers, @Oreo consistently utilises Twitter to keep up to date with current social media trends and global events, clinching the opportunity to produce campaigns which generate a similar following.
With no specific target market, the brand curates engaging content for a wide range of consumers. Their success can be explained by Katz and Blumler’s UGT theory, which recognises that consumers actively seek media content which will satisfy our pursuit for: entertainment, information, social interaction and a sense of personal identity.
Entertainment
An eminent example of this was Oreo’s capitalisation on the 34 minute blackout during the 2013 Superbowl, which thwarted 108.4m viewers. The simple ad was produced in real-time and retweeted 10K times within the hour; the brand appeared to have cleverly captured the now aimless audience, who gathered on Twitter to express their mirth and confusion about the blackout and were in search for something to keep them occupied…
Information
To celebrate their 100th birthday, Oreo initiated the #DailyTwist campaign. The company designed artistic content which was focused on current or historical events from the 100 calendar days between June 25th and Oct 2nd, engaging a mass majority of consumers who have a curiosity about society and culture.
Social interaction and personal identity
More recently, their #MyOreoCreation campaign has created a highly engaging contest for consumers, whereby they can send in their own Oreo cookie flavour ideas to Twitter or Instagram with the hashtags #MyOreoCreation and #Contest, to be produced and possibly even shelved by the company, thus providing consumers with a much more personalised Oreo experience!
In order to propel their global reach, the #OreoDunkChallenge have elected celebrity endorsement from @neymarjr, @xtina and @SHAQ — popular figures that represent the ideal lifestyle for consumers to identify with and model their consumerist choices on.
The challenge involves their latest technological innovation: a mobile game app produced collaboratively with Google Maps, called Oreo Space Dunk, which uses mobile geo-location services and motion detection, allowing players to explore real places in the world on Street View just by the dunk of a biscuit! Although it is only currently available in the US, the game is set to become internationally available over the course of their campaign.
By interacting with other companies/ public figures and being receptive to consumers who publicly mention them, Oreo have demonstrated how to use social media in a fun, light-hearted manner to strengthen both their global brand identity and the brand-consumer relationship.
So how might Oreo be criticised?
Well despite using a synergy of various social media platforms to internally advertise campaigns, Oreo haven’t created quite as much innovative content for their official Facebook, Instagram or YouTube accounts…
Instead, they seem to regurgitate the same simple images and short videos produced for Twitter!
Perhaps this is a simple attempt for the brand to quickly resonate with its consumers? If so, Oreo could be much more industrious. They have the potential to become a more dominant online presence and generate a much larger appeal if they decide to use other platforms as well as they do Twitter.
