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From the 7th Annual Shorty Awards

Oreo’s Laboratorium Unleashes Halloween 'Nomsters'

Silver Honor in Vine

Objectives

Oreo has become an icon for engaging Millennials with clever social content and for creating world-class Vine content, keeping the 102-year-old cookie as relevant as ever. In particular, Oreo has garnered attention for its wildly popular Snack Hacks series and its 2013 homage to popular horror movies.

This past Halloween, Oreo wanted to up the ante by seizing Halloween lore to engage and entertain the brand's community using video. And where better to do so than on Vine?

Inspired by the 1800's mad scientist laboratory, we launched the "Oreo Laboratorium" – performing experiments on Oreo cookies to create "nomsters" and unleashing them on Vine and via social channels. For five days leading up to Halloween, we brought a new "nomster" to life and encouraged fans to "Name the Nomster."

Our custom "Tim Burton-esque" Laboratorium used movie-making techniques like stop motion animation and an intricate 64" x 32" set created by famed set designer Lori Nix, along with more than 100 different props with handcrafted features. To create the "nomsters," the team sculpted and fabricated over 40 stages of models.

The five-day campaign generated more than 21 million impressions, including 4.3 million organic Twitter impressions, 260,000 video views and thousands of social shares, and fans were invited to explore the lab in its entirety in social. Heralded in the press as Adweek "Ad of the Day," "Scary good content" and "winner of brand-video Halloween," it was one of the year's best Vine campaigns, generating 14 million PR impressions in just five days.

Strategy and Execution

Since its Super Bowl moment, Oreo has been recognized as a leading brand in social media, and it has built a reputation as one of the "best brands on Vine," according to Adweek, Mashable and Fast Company. From our Daily Twist effort on Facebook and to our integrated Snack Hacks series, we continue to move forward with innovative social marketing efforts. Oreo is a brand that keeps millennial audiences anticipating what the brand will think of next by continually deploying new creative activations that keep our brand ahead in social. As new platforms have emerged and evolved, Oreo was challenged to maintain brand love and to demonstrate our social leadership using by keeping its Vine content relevant, entertaining and fresh.

You can browse all of Oreo's Vines at: https://vine.co/Oreo

For Halloween, Oreo wanted to create a press-worthy moment that would break through the cluttered and highly saturated space around the holiday, and engage and entertain the brand's community in the process. And we wanted to make an impact in six seconds or less.

Halloween would be a prime opportunity for Oreo to surprise and delight fans with a creative campaign by putting a cookie-lover's spin on the holiday's go-to treat: candy. Building on the success Oreo saw with its 2013 homage to popular horror movies on Vine, our strategy was to up the ante and engage fans with an original "twist" on Vine content.

We would seize Halloween and create another memorable Vine moment for Oreo, stealing candy's Halloween spotlight once again using six-second animated video content.

Enter The Oreo Laboratorium. A laboratory that would illustrate the spooky, twisted, and tasty things that happen when one experiments on the world's sweetest subject: Oreo cookies. We would use the experiment to excite our fans on social with content that would captivate and entertain them.

Inspired by the 1800's mad scientist laboratory, we created a custom "Tim Burton-esque" Oreo lab and brought it to life through movie-making techniques like stop motion animation and beautifully crafted set design – to combine Oreo cookies with Halloween candy to create our original "nomsters".

To produce the custom 64" x 32" set, fully explorable on social, we worked with famed set designer Lori Nix, whose work has been featured in the Smithsonian and The New York Times. The set features more than 100 different props, including many handcrafted features. We then partnered with Castelli Models, to sculpt and fabricate more than 40 stages of models that would be used to create the stop-motion videos.

In the five days leading up to Halloween, we unleashed our creations in video, vines, GIFS and photos across Oreo's social platforms. We then encouraged fans to "Name the Nomster" and featured the best name for each "nomster" at the end of the day each was released.

Fan response was immediate and ardent. Across social, fans jumped at the opportunity to name our creations, putting forth their best suggestions including Chocohowler, Octo-Oreo, and Count Cornelius Creme.

In just five-days, we captivated our audience though Vine and in social:

With an innovative, creative Vine-driven campaign, Oreo stole the Halloween spotlight, being heralded as Adweek "Ad of the Day," "Scary good content" and "winner of brand-video Halloween."

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Oreo, 360i, Weber Shandwick, Dream Machine, Lori Nix, Dan Castelli

Link

Entry Credits