Content Champions: Mondelez International Thailand (Oreo)

Mondelez International is an American snack company that has many iconic global and local brands such as Oreo, Ritz, LU, Clif Bar and Tate's Bake Shop biscuits and baked snacks, as well as Cadbury Dairy Milk, Milka and Toblerone chocolate under them. It also has operations in more than 80 countries.

Content Champions is a segment during MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's Content360 conference in Singapore in which we highlight brands who have made significant impact in the content marketing space through their campaigns. This campaign was first shortlisted for Marketing Excellence Awards 2023 and was further evaluated by the editorial team at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE to make the shortlist. 

Campaign: Songkran #SmileWithOreo
Brand: Mondelez International Thailand (Oreo)

Challenge

Oreo is dedicated to forging a profound connection with Thailand’s market by actively participating in one of Thailand's grandest celebrations, Songkran (Thai New Year). Nevertheless, the snack category confronts fierce competition, as competitors endeavor to captivate consumers through promotions and new product launches during the festive period.

In 2022, Oreo successfully drove core cookies growth through the launch of the #SmilewithOREO campaign where it introduced 13 kinds of smiles during Songkran with proven success in social media sentiment and sales uplift for the Oreo brand. However, due to the COVID-19 restrictions at the time, the activation was limited to digital and ATL.

With COVID-19 restrictions lifting, it's vision was to upscale #SmilewithOREO to be a local mega campaign in order to drive more brand affinity and relevancy through a core-led activation in this season with refreshed integrated marketing communication.

This was the brand's opportunity to become even more prominent, stay more relevant, and bring people closer together to create joyful connections.

Strategy

The primary objective of this captivating campaign is not only to inspire and ignite a sense of brand affinity among consumers but also to establish Oreo as the ultimate choice for biscuits and snacks during this moment.

By seamlessly intertwining the exuberant spirit of Songkran with the playful of Oreo products, its aim was to craft an unforgettable experience during the most playful festival of the year that deeply resonates with consumers, reinforcing their unwavering loyalty to the brand.

Execution

In this 2023 continuation campaign, Oreo made the campaign even more personalised and shareable to everyone. It wanted to encourage Thai people to unleash their fullest and brightest smiles because it believed that 13 smiles weren’t enough. “EVERYONE” smile was needed to fulfill this year’s holiday spirit.

To do so, it celebrated everyone's smile in Thailand by creating a digital Oreo smile version for their smile. “YourOreoSmile.com” was introduced as a campaign hub of its 2023 #SmileWithOreo activation.

On this site, it asked Thai people to log in and they got a digital Oreo cookie smile token using AI machine learning technology to capture and render a personalised smile cookie based on each and everyone’s unique smile. To make this even more personalised, it added a feature where the consumer can put their names on the cookies instead of the normal Oreo logo.

Moreover, it added a charitable addition where each share of a consumer's AI OreoSmile on social media, equates to a one baht donation to Operation Smile Foundation to provide free surgeries to repair cleft lips, cleft palates, and other facial deformities for children throughout the country.

It also partnered with various chain restaurants to create exclusive Oreo menus that were meant to put a smile on everyone’s faces and grow its business in away-from-home channels during the Songkran period.

Check out the other winners here.