OREO x Pokémon campaign demonstrated that paid media can be highly impactful in driving excitement and purchase in under a month. Media tactics were widely visible, innovative, and playful - traits that matched our partnership platform. A YouTube Masthead drove high awareness at launch. An innovative Twitter activation prompted users to engage with OREO tweets to receive personalized responses indicating which Pokémon cookie they might be destined to discover. A billboard featuring a giant-size, OREO cookie-pixelated Pikachu garnered plenty of earned media. This campaign showed that a brand message can be brought to life through the media tactics themselves.

Every year, OREO crafts a remarkable fan-first partnership to drive sales and the internet wild. With their 25th anniversary approaching, we chose Pokémon.

This campaign’s objective was to stand out in a crowded category that’s awash in partnerships, to go beyond slapping a logo on a cookie. We needed to translate Pokémon’s core rarity scheme to real-life OREO packages and transform the classic Limited Time Offer brand partnership into a sought-after cultural hit.

Objectives:

Drive brick-and-mortar and online sales of this LTE pack: KPIs included max weekly velocities, pre-order online sales, and daily unit sales.

Create genuine excitement among Pokémon fans: KPIs included engagement, and video views across organic and paid social channels; shopping clicks, and influencer engagement rate.

Cement OREO’s place in pop culture: KPIs included sentiment, broadcast & social earned media placements, organic social media impressions, and total earned media program impressions.

OREO has been ahead of the curve with powerhouse partnerships: Lady Gaga, Supreme, and Game of Thrones helped elevate OREO into popular culture through nationwide US launches. Yet other brands caught on, and as the category has become awash in surface-level partnerships, we had to evolve our approach.

Connecting with consumers via fandom requires a true understanding of what turns the casual consumer into a fan.

This project was inspired by the organic synergy between OREO and Pokémon and expanded upon by research of the Pokémon fandom. OREO and Pokémon are both centered on play and discovery: Pokémon fans love exploring and collecting the wide variety of Pokémon types as much as OREO fans love finding and trying everything new from OREO.

We created a unique campaign that makes both OREO and Pokémon fans go wild– Smashing previous records and creating the bestselling OREO LTE pack ever in the process.

Pokémon has been around for 25 years and is always evolving, so it never gets stale. While many fans are children/teenagers and their Millennial parents, the rest of the Pokémon fans fall in between the traditional markers of childhood and adulthood, representing a broad opportunity for consumers to discover new ways to enjoy OREO and embrace the playful spirit that makes the cookies so special.

To capture users across both OREO and Pokémon fanbases, a broad audience was implemented across all platforms (in line with OREO’s general targeting strategy), with interest targeting related to ‘Food’ and ‘Pokemon’ added in. ‘Gaming; interests were incorporated on a handful of platforms as well. Specific keywords and conversation topics relating to the campaign (ie. pokemon, specific pokemon names, gaming, food/snacks, etc.) were also utilized.

The Oreo x Pokémon campaign was live for 3.5 weeks in September, generating +65M views of the partnership teaser and product-focused videos across Paid, Organic, and PR. The teaser video ran a week prior to the product being available in retail, with a YouTube Masthead placement spiking video views. Soon after, the LTE pack announcement, featuring assets that showcased the different Pokémon cookie embossments, ran across Facebook & Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Twitter’s innovative activation allowed fans to engage with OREO tweets and receive a personalized response indicating which Pokémon cookie they might discover. Influencers also promoted the limited-edition cookie on TikTok. And to blow out the partnership even further, an OOH billboard in LA featured a giant Pikachu made out of OREOs, which garnered stellar earned media value.

OREO x Pokémon LTE packs crushed records for our previous LTE partnerships. The success of the launch has put OREO on the path to adding a whopping $1B in sales by 2023.

Dominated online buzz:

2.62B+ UVPM Total Program Impressions, topping Supreme LTE’s 2B impressions

1,644 Total Online, Broadcast + Social Placements

374 Broadcast Segments on Top 50 DMAs; over 200% more broadcast hits than Lady Gaga LTE

14M+ total organic social impressions

99% positive + neutral sentiment

Broke into new media verticals including: gaming, esports, entertainment, and business.

Created genuine excitement among Pokémon fans:

364k+ total organic social media engagements

1.5M+ total video views across organic social

29.3M+ views across paid social

14k+ Instagram shopping clicks, 12k over OREO LTE average

Influencer posts garnered 5.1% average engagement rate vs. Industry 2% benchmark

Like the rarest Pokémon cards, our rarest Mew cookies appeared on eBay for thousands of dollars