Oreo Wins The Superbowl Ad Wars With A Timely Tweet
from the cost-less-than-$3.5-million dept
Yesterday was the day that, each year, proves that people do not in fact hate advertising. They actually like it quite a bit if the advertising is good. What they hate is crappy and annoying advertising. Of course, every Super Bowl, various brands duke it out to see who can get the most bang for their buck in Super Bowl advertisements — which this year went for a cool $3.5 million for a basic spot. Still, many people are pointing out that the real winner of the Super Bowl advertising fight wasn’t from one of the TV commercials at all, but rather Oreo’s advertising agency, who sprung into immediate action when the power went out at the Super Bowl. Within just a few minutes (I think slightly less than 15), Oreo had put out the following tweet:
Power out? No problem. twitter.com/Oreo/status/29…
— Oreo Cookie (@Oreo) February 4, 2013
Tide also got a “blackout” graphic and joke online, three minutes after Oreo. It put up a weak image with a caption: “We can’t get your blackout, But we can get your stains out.” Kudos for trying, but definitely a step behind Oreo.
It’s worth noting, by the way, that Oreo did, in fact, pay for a Super Bowl commercial as well, though it was showing up on lists of the worst Super Bowl commercials of the year. Whoever came up with the image and the tweet in record time may have saved the Super Bowl for Oreo.
Of course, all of this does raise a larger point about marketing and advertising these days. Doing a good job often has less to do with how much money you spend than with how good you are at actually connecting with people — and a well-timed tweet and graphic can do wonders.
Filed Under: advertisements, blackout, fast reactions, social media, super bowl
Companies: audi, oreo, walgreens
Comments on “Oreo Wins The Superbowl Ad Wars With A Timely Tweet”
Idiom
Took me a few minutes to understand it. From http://www.thefreedictionary.com/dunk
dunk (dngk)
n.
1. The act or an instance of dunking.
2. A liquid or creamy food into which other foods are dunked.
3. Basketball A dunk shot.
So we get a triple score here! 1- immerse you in the experience of Oreo, 2- The cookie itself (2 crispy parts “immersed” in creamy fillings) and 3- basketball pun in a football match.
If I got it right then hats off to the team, it’s plain epic! Advertisement for me is associated with annoying, invasive and visually unpleasant lately. However, done right it can be epic.
Btw, English natives please correct me if I’m wrong. The non-English native readers in TD appreciate!
Re: Idiom
I think you’ve read way too much into it. 🙂
Oreos are famous for being cookies that you’re supposed to “dunk” into milk before eating…
Re: Re: Idiom
Oh I’d never dunk that type of cookie in milk so I’d never imagine it’s just some usual habit. Thanks!
Re: Re: Re: Idiom
whatwhatwhat? you have no idea what you’re missing
Re: Re: Re:2 Idiom
I don’t know if – strictly speaking – it’s appropriate to use the insightful button here, but I did anyway.
Re: Re: Re:3 Idiom
agreed.
and if you have not ever done so before, may i suggest that you grab some oreos and milk and go to town on it.
Re: Re: Re:4 Idiom
coffee is also acceptable
Re: Re: Re: Idiom
It’s probably the only reasonable way people can eat those nasty things without hurting themselves. Aside of the infamous sickly-sweet white filling, non-dunked Oreos are hard as a sea biscuit… and when you manage to take a bite after all, they crumble into razor-sharp fragments. I suppose Americans got mouths with extra durable lining or something. grin
Re: Re: Idiom
Well you could also call Jacoby’s 108yd returning touchdown a dunk, too. In a sense. You know that stung.
Re: Re: Idiom
I dunk mine in beer.
Re: Re: Re: Idiom
Ok that sounds utterly disgusting.
Re: Re: Re: Idiom
Make it a rum. Oreo+Rum=WIN!
Re: Re: Re:2 Idiom
That sounds ok. But beer?
Article tl;dr: ads are only good once a year, and with a $3.5Million price tag, of course they’re going to try to be good.
For the rest of the 364 days: too bad, suckers!
/heh
I think the winning tweet was the one from Audi America:
Audi @Audi
Sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now…
(Mercedes-Benz giving its name to the superdome)
Re: Re:
Sorry, should have read the article with both eyes open…
Oreos suck. Here’s a tip. Instead of spending such ridiculous amounts of money on advertising, how about spending that on making a product that people want to buy?
Re: Re:
Tim Tams!!! The biscuit of Kings and chocophiles everywhere!
Oh that’s right, you’re all over in America where cookies are not biscuits and biscuits are scones and scones are… WFT are scones (with cream and Jam [what you call preserve]) called??
Though calling Grid Iron Football is sorta strange, though calling it a Game is even stranger..
runs now
Re: Re: Re:
Couldn’t agree more. I’m from Northern Ireland where we refer to biscuits(cookies), buns(cakes), baps(buns), scones(biscuits), and jams(jellies). The American words are in brackets.
PS the biscuit of kings is the choccy Hob Nob.
Re: Re: Re:
There is a difference between jelly (or jam) and preserves. Preserves actually have the fruit in it where as jelly and jam are made just from the juice.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
In jelly, the fruit comes in the form of fruit juice.
In jam, the fruit comes in the form of fruit pulp or crushed fruit (and is less stiff than jelly as a result).
In preserves, the fruit comes in the form of chunks in a syrup or a jam.
So all are different in their own special way. At least they aren’t marmalade.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
I wasn’t aware of a difference between jelly and jam. We’ve always used those two terms interchangably.
Re: Re: Re:
Scones are called scones.
The difference there is that I believe “scones” in the UK refers to what we call “biscuits” here, and “scones” here refer to a particular kind of what we call “biscuits”.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
In the US scones are sweet.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Not always. There are a great variety of savory scones. It has more to do with the texture and type of leavening.
What is this Super Bowl you talk of?
Re: Re:
Its some sort of ritual combat that takes place in 10 second bursts between adverts.
Re: Re:
Think of soccer or Rugby.. then totally wipe it out of your mind and then think of a game like chess, played with two sides each with two teams each (offence and Defence cause one person can’t be smart enough to play both.. oh noes) and then wrap them up in the most amount of protection you can find so they don’t get no boobies or oweis. Then make it go for more than 2 hrs at a time (sometimes LOTS more) then basically to watch it you will realise why the American’s are so passionate about ‘watching’ their Gridiron with Lots and Lots of Snacks and Beer.
Though I could be wrong
Re: Re: Re:
not all Americans watch football or eat snacks or drink beer.
For some it is ‘just another day’.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Indeed! I only personally know three people who watch football at all (I’m not one of them). I don’t drink beer. But I do eat snacks.
Re: Re: Re:
Soccer? What’s that? It’s football where I come from.
Re: Re: Re:
Its much like the Irish vs British soccer games, only less guns and mauling by the fans.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
That sort of ‘fan participation’ is reserved for hockey in the US.
Re: Re: Re:2 Re:
Or the occasional basketball game. 🙂
Re: Re: Re:
American football is just different than soccer or rugby. The positions are more specialized and the plays are more setup and choreographed.
Re: Re:
They mean the Pooper Hole.
.
.
.
Come on guys, let’s get this one rolling…
Re: Re: Re:
I’m thinking of something involving Pooper Hole, Oreo and dunking. And laughing.
Re: Re:
I think its a bit like rugby but for pussies.
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Get hit by a 300 lb man running at 20 mph repeatedly then tell me who’s a pussy.
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300 lbs of mostly muscle because he weight trains for that too.
Re: Re:
It is a game for the wii.
It uses 100 pins instead of the usual 5 or 10.
RE: Super
Super bowl, is that not the Crapper Superman uses??
*I hate (watching) sports, I am not typical of Americans
Kick me, harder!
Dunkin Donuts has to be kicking themselves right about now as this would have been a natural for them – doh! 🙂
Oreos
Take 2, slather peanut butter in between then dunk.
A perfect treat after a super bowl.
Re: Oreos
They make those too already. My wife loves the peanut butter oreos.
Based on many of these anti-football comments, I’m going to go out on a limb and say there’s a high percentage of commenters who fall into one or more of the following catagories:
A) Aren’t from the US
B) Got picked on by football players in high school
C) Are/were big fans of Magic: The Gathering
D) Didn’t lose their virginity until their 20’s
Re: Re:
Tsk tsk NB
A) Aren’t from the US – Philadelphia, PA
B) Got picked on by football players in high school – Football guys were ok, I played baseball.
C) Are/were big fans of Magic: The Gathering – Played D&D at camp.
D) Didn’t lose their virginity until their 20’s – 15
Ahem! FOOTBALL SUCKS!!!!! I just dont like it. I would rather watch 20 hours of The Isle of Man footage, Formula One, and repeats of That Metal Show than be subjected to 1 minute of Football.
Re: Re: Re:
I grew up watching and playing football. Never really cared much for baseball until I met my wite who was a huge fan. I still prefer football to baseball even though I don’t watch it as regularly as I used to. Now I mostly follow the PGA tour.
Re: Re:
Most people here has the attention span required to follow a discussion, and so probably prefer entertainment where they don’t have to multi-task to avoid boredom.
Ads
> Yesterday was the day that, each year,
> proves that people do not in fact hate
> advertising. They actually like it quite a
> bit if the advertising is good. What they
> hate is crappy and annoying advertising.
Actually, what most people hate is the repitition and quantity of the ads.
Even those clever Super Bowl ads will be fast-forwarded through in the weeks to come as people– having already seen them many times– will become sick of them and just want to get back to the actual show they tuned in to watch. And when you put so many of them together that they ad up to over five minutes of non-stop ads, all the cleverness in the world won’t stop people from hitting FFW.
Ambush
> I’m in awe, given that with big brands you
> normally expect there to be a bit too much red
> tape and “approvals” for anything like that.
I predict that instead of celebrating the cleverness of this sort of marketing, at some point one of these big events will go after the next Oreo for ‘ambush marketing’ and making money off the event without paying to be a sponsor. They usually do it by trademarking all the possible words associated with the event, but in a case like this, where there’s nothing to trademark ahead of time, I can see them still stamping their foot like petulant children and whining about unfair it is that a company was able to capitalize off the Super Bowl or the Olympics (or whatever) without having to pay for the privilege.
How Oreo was ready to take advantage of the blackout
How Oreo Culture-Jacked The Super Bowl – Speakeasy – WSJ: ?Because Oreo was a Super Bowl advertiser, we had set up a team of folks at our offices with people from Oreo as well to both listen to and optimize the chatter on the Internet,? Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i told Speakeasy via email. ?While we certainly didn?t expect the blackout, the team?s first instinct upon the blackout was to figure out how Oreo can be relevant in the moment. Having a full team of creative, social media experts and the brand made it quick and seamless.?
Dunkle also means dark in German
I didn’t watch the game or pay any attention to the commercials. Beyonce’s halftime show is all I wanted to see…and it was AWESOME!!!!
Re: Re:
So awesome it caused the blackout