2019 Winners & Shortlists

WE ARE OREO PEOPLE

Short List
BrandMONDELEZ
Product/ServiceOREO
EntrantHORIZON FCB Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
CategoryFast Moving Consumer Goods
Idea Creation HORIZON FCB Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Media Placement SPARK FOUNDRY Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Production HORIZON FCB Dubai, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Background.

Oreo has an incredibly high 97% awareness level in KSA, yet that translates only to 47% in household penetration. Why? Because Oreo’s consumption is primarily driven by kids. Even though adults contribute the highest volume to the business, they’re not the ones enjoying the cookie. Therefore, we have potential to grow Oreo’s share by expanding our consumers beyond kids, to everyone. Research showed that Oreo is highly associated with kids due to its marketing approach. The brand is known to use cartoony animations in its advertising, to hero children in the creative copies, and to promote the child-like ritual of twist-lick-dunking every cookie into a glass of milk. Knowing that, we wanted to shift perception from a children’s cookie… to everyone’s cookie.

Describe the creative idea.

Oreo is a token of wonder across the world. The GCC region is rich in cultural diversity due to the large expat community, which leaves little room for commonalities. We wanted to invite everyone to identify as Oreo People by recognizing that the cookie is for everyone,regardless of age, background and interests. Rather than glossing over their differences with a one-size-fits-all approach, we tackled them head-on. We created content catering to a range of interests on YouTube, and deliberately targeted them with content seemingly contrasting their search. Someone interested in Bollywood music would instead be served a pre-roll featuring a heavy-metal rocker, and someone interested in Arab music would be served a pre-roll featuring a rapper and so forth. It was then revealed that the two had something in common: a shared love for Oreo.With a humorous and playful twist, we positioned Oreo as a cookie that transcends any boundary.

Describe the strategy.

Our ambition was to connect Oreo with everyone, and we recognised that personalised creative was the way to achieve this. We harnessed audience signals from Google to understand our users’ behaviour & content preference in order to empower our content creation. We launched the campaign on TV, but the big bang was amplified online. On social media, Oreo was everywhere. • We curated user-generated content that illustrated different ways of enjoying an Oreo. • We developed 3 Snapchat filters as the platform is wildly popular among Saudi Youth. • On Anghami, the leading music-streaming platform in MENA, we adapted Oreo’s existing ‘People’ jingle for a music-loving audience, highlighting that people have varying tastes in music, but a common love for Oreo. Our most innovative execution revolved around bespoke and dynamic YouTube copies: with the help of Google insights, we released 48 personalized pre-rolls contextually matched to videos within multiple categories.

Describe the execution.

We knew a one-message-fits-all campaign wouldn’t cut it. That’s why we leveraged Vogon - a YouTube tool that generates customized ads based on content preference. But where typical advertisers would personalize messages based on interest; we capitalized on people’s differences by highlighting one commonality – their mutual love for Oreo. As per Google's insights, we identified the region's top content categories consumed by our target market on YouTube, and produced 48 unique pre-roll films that spoke directly to the whatever the viewer was searching for and purposefully mismatched thousands of search terms through unique characters, never serving the same video twice. The same creative treatment i.e. background, props, brand colours were used across all genres (to ensure consistency) with the “mismatched” character and keywords changing from script to script. This YouTube takeover by MENA’s favorite cookie proved that despite our differences, We Are All Oreo People!

List the results.

The results were wonderfilled! It was evident that viewers appreciated the relevant and entertaining content served to them as our View Through Rate skyrocketed to a high 49% versus an average of 25% that we have seen across the rest of our ads. We conducted a brand lift study on YouTube that revealed a 22% uplift in ad recall of the dynamic personalized ads vs. an 11% uplift from the generic ads from. Most importantly, total Oreo value sales grew by 7.7% in KSA from August to November (pre Oreo People campaign and post Oreo People campaign), and 13.4% in UAE. All in all, this campaign showed that despite everyone's differences, we are all Oreo People!

Credits

Name Company Role
Mazen Jawad Horizon FCB Dubai President
Reham Mufleh Horizon FCB Dubai General Manager
Bruno Bomediano Horizon FCB Executive Creative Director
Dio Santos Horizon FCB Dubai Creative Director
Elsa de Bruyn Horizon FCB Copywriter
Kutaiba Kabbani Horizon FCB Arabic copywriter
Munther Al Sheyyab Horizon FCB Planning Director
Nadine Halawany Horizon FCB Dubai Regional Account Director
Hiam Baltaji Horizon FCB Dubai Senior Account Manager
Samer Amir Lord & Thomas Producer
Lord & Thomas Lord & Thomas Production House
Mladen Dizdar Freelancer Film director
Waleed Abdulaziz Lord & Thomas Creative Media Producer
Udit Sinha Horizon FCB Junior Account Planner
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