Oreo Outage Tweet Is Social Marketing Done Right

Oreo seems to have the social media marketing thing down. During the infamous power outage during last night’s Super Bowl, the beloved cookie brand quickly thought on its feet and tweeted this:

While the power outage lasted for about a half hour, Oreo was able to get out a highly successful ad (for free) to accompany its TV spot (not free). Buzzfeed spoke with 360i, the agency behind the tweet. Agency president Sarah Hofstetter told them:

“We had a mission control set up at our office with the brand and 360i, and when the blackout happened, the team looked at it as an opportunity. Because the brand team was there, it was easy to get approvals and get it up in minutes.”

“You need a brave brand to approve content that quickly. When all of the stakeholders come together so quickly, you’ve got magic.”

As of the time of this writing, that one tweet has been retweeted 14,555 times, and is still being retweeted regularly.

So about Oreo and social media marketing – the brand once set a Guinness Record for likes on Facebook, and has frequently used timely events to capitalize on its large following on social media channels.