Oreo Continues Its Ascent to Social Media Fame

By Mark J.Miller

When an ad for a cookie contains a "Do Not Attempt" disclaimer, you know you've got marketing gold. 

As the Super Bowl went dark for nearly half an hour, the Oreo employees tasked with handling the brand’s social media during the game went quickly to work and came out with a tweet that won the company major kudos. “Power out?” it asked. “No problem. You can dunk in the dark.”

Oreo has since been showing its social strength, launching a “Cookie vs. Crème” debate onInstagram that encourages consumers to post images that lets the world know which side they fall on. That battle also raged on its Twitter and Facebook pages and is now being followed up on the brand’s YouTube page with a series featuring four inventors who have created “high-tech, robotic-like machines that divides the two for maximum cookie enjoyment,” Mashable reports.

The first inventor to be featured is physicist David Neevel, who explains his position in a monotone while his Rube Goldberg-esque machine gets the separating done. The following three inventors will each be introduced to the world in the next two weeks. The hope is to not only create a hunger for the cookie but for the brand to add some YouTube followers as well. "We are continuously looking at YouTube as a means to share Oreo video content to keep our fans engaged and excited," Janda Lukin, Brand Director for Oreo at Mondelez, told Mashable.

The YouTube channel, which has about 9,500 followers, has got some catching up to do. Oreo’s Facebook page has 32 million likes and its Twitter page has more than 77,000 followers. Of course the YouTube numbers could follow what happened to Oreo’s Instagram followers, which went from 2,200 before the Super Bowl to 87,000 after the game ended. Touchdown!

"We are always keeping an eye on cultural events and trends using the lens of how Oreo would view them," Lukin told Mashable. "We are excited by the response to date and look forward to continuing to engage with our fans in this way around topics we know are important to them."

That cultural telescope was trained on the Oscars Sunday night when Oreo’s social media team tweeted throughout the event. Its first tweet of the night referred to “Wreck It Ralph,” a nominee for Best Animated Film, and read, “Why wreck something when you can dunk it?” Then it pulled out all the stops in a tweet that awesomely re-created the famous "James Bond" opening sequence (at the same time the Oscars were honoring Bond) and used the phrases, “Some prefer it shaken. We like it dunked,” along with “Cookie, Oreo Cookie.” After a nod to “The Walking Dead” on another channel, Oreo’s final tweet of the Oscars paid tribute to Best Picture "Argo" with the tagline, “What lengths will you go to, to rescue a cookie that broke off in milk? See how far we went…”  

In other words, Oreo’s on it. And as AdAge points out, the brand has been on it for some time. Last summer, to celebrate its 100th birthday, Oreo posted a different image of an Oreo every day and most of them were inspired by what was happening that day or week, such asShark Week Oreo or Mars Rover Oreo. The company also brought a lot of attention to itself with an image of an Oreo with rainbow crème filling to celebrate gay pride.

Like it or hate it, Oreo is pushing to get its image out there in social media as hard as it can. This week, it also made its move to gain more attention on mobile devices by releasing a new appcalled Oreo Skies for Nokia Lumia phones that allow users to send special messages to pals “twisted” up into the constellations.

Oreo’s excellent work in this area has led to other companies not looking particularly sharp when it comes to social media, such as when Poland Spring missed its opportunity to glorify itself during the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union and In-N-Out Burger’s total flop on Oscar night when a pic of Best Director Ang Lee stuffing his face with their fare made its rounds on Twitter.

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