I’m always looking for brands that are doing exciting, unconventional things on social media, whether in marketing, branding, or recruiting, and designated them “Superstars.” Past honorees have included Chitpotle and State Farm. Today, I’m recognizing a brand whose every piece of content is injected with fun and whimsy: Oreo. Everyone knows they won a Clio and a Cannes Lion Award for their clever and timely tweet during last year’s Super Bowl blackout, which changed social marketing forever. But their daily social efforts are equally engaging and effective. Here’s how the cookie crumbles:
Continuous Call to Action
Despite being “just” a simple dessert product, Oreo has several ongoing mini-campaigns. One of them is Oreo Snack Hacks, which is centralized on the brand’s Tumblr. “Whether it’s putting cookies in a pepper grinder to make sprinkles or freezing cookies in milk to make cubes for your iced coffee, we’ve shown you unexpected ways to enjoy an Oreo cookie,” reads the Snack Hacks main page, “Now we want to see the clever ways you snack an Oreo.” Fans and foodies concoct all sorts of delicacies — red velvet cookies with Oreos inside, for instance — and submit them. Oreo shares it, the fans share it, and everyone wins.
The takeaway: Take a cue from Oreo and determine how you can get fans more involved with your brand. People have been using Oreos in recipes for decades before the brand realized it could leverage that enthusiasm to create content that goes viral and inspires millions of aspiring pastry chefs.
Fanatically Fun Facebook
Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the brand’s social media frivolity is its Facebook page, which boasts an impressive 36 million likes. Besides posting much of its Twitter and Vine content, the page also features humorous images, like this “lost” poster:
Oreo has no qualms about leaving up kooky posts and comments by its Facebook fans, since it matches the brand’s personality; if it’s silly and has anything to do with Oreos, the brand allows it. And why not? One photo posted by a fan showed an entire box of Oreos that had been separated into stacks of cookies and one giant tower of creme. This unsolicited post, which cost the company nothing, got 224 likes and 13 comments.
The takeaway: Sure, Oreo has it easy, being a cookie brand, but there are lots of ways to provide compelling content that suits your voice. Hotels, airlines, and even Amtrak post travel photos of beautiful locations. Pepsi posts videos of the musical artists they sponsor. Bank of America devotes an entire Twitter account to its community service. What content matches your brand’s mission and values?
Bite-Sized Content
#OreoSnackHacks is just one of the brand’s ongoing series. Another uses a format even shorter than 140 characters — the six seconds of a Vine video. #OreoMagic is a series of tiny magic tricks and illusions starring the cookie. The dialogue-free videos are funny, short, and accessible in any language. They don’t have ads running at the beginning or take any time to load on a mobile device. And that’s in addition to Oreo-created hashtags like #DunkFail, which gives a humorous spin to the popular image of dunking cookies in milk, and #Ollusions, a variation on #OreoMagic that features mind-blowing optical illusions — again, in six seconds.
The takeaway: Creating a series can create regular visits to your social channels or your website. Oreo uses Vine, but your series could involve photos on Pinterest, longer videos on YouTube, podcasts on EarWolf, or even blog articles on a certain topic, such as social media superstars…
Miscellaneous Magical Munchies
Oreo has a presence on even more social channels. The brand has more than 300 images on Pinterest, including “Daily Twist,” a gallery of clever and timely images using Oreos; for example, a cookie slipping into a ballot box celebrates National Voter Registration Day. Other galleries provide recipes for Halloween treats, images of Oreo art (using the white creme as a tiny canvas), and — of course — a gallery of “Oreo Moments” submitted by Facebook fans. Oreo uses YouTube to host its commercials from all over the world, highlight some of its most popular Snack Hacks, and feature some fun videos that seemed to be made expressly for online viewing. The result is more than 50,000 subscribers and more than 43 million total views.
The takeaway: All your fans may not use all social channels. Oreo posts the same visual content on Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Pinterest, and YouTube, ensuring that everyone sees it. But they also post content unique to each channel, so their social media super-fans see something new and different every day.
There are few better examples of maximizing a product’s potential than Oreo. From recipes to tiny artworks to comic statements, the brand brings a sense of joy to all its content — and encourages fans to create their own. This philosophy makes the famous Super Bowl tweet seem less like a lucky fluke and more like the culmination of a brilliant and perceptive marketing effort. For all these reasons, I name Oreo a Social Media Superstar!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to eat an entire carton of a certain sandwich cookie…
Jason Ginsburg is Director of Interactive Branding at Brandemix.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jody Ordioni is the author of “The Talent Brand.” In her role as Founder and Chief Brand Officer of Brandemix, she leads the firm in creating brand-aligned talent communications that connect employees to cultures, companies, and business goals. She engages with HR professionals and corporate teams on how to build and promote talent brands, and implement best-practice talent acquisition and engagement strategies across all media and platforms. She has been named a "recruitment thought leader to follow" and her mission is to integrate marketing, human resources, internal communications, and social media to foster a seamless brand experience through the employee lifecycle.
