Context
The world’s favourite black and white cookie represents so much simple joy and playfulness in our lives. Though Gen Z and Millennials are the target audience, we’re fortunate to be working with a brand which naturally sparks playful interaction with everyone who encounters them. In line with their commitment to becoming the gaming snack of choice, Oreo teamed up with a universal icon of gaming – PAC-MAN.

Challenge
Our challenge was to create a unique visual identity for the collaboration – incorporating the best of both brand worlds – across six bespoke cookie designs and limited-edition packaging, for multiple European markets. In a world full of iconic collaborations, we sought to create the most playful and tasty one. The aim? To unlock a brand experience full of nostalgia and fun – and cement Oreo’s status as the world’s most playful cookie.

Inspiration
PAC-MAN has two distinctive aspects. One is it’s characters. The playful Ghosts who chase PAC-MAN’s iconic form around the maze need no introduction. Secondly, PAC-MAN is entirely about navigating the maze, and the Original embossment of an Oreo cookie has always had a maze–like quality to it.

Design
With that in mind, we turned each of Pacman’s distinctive assets into a maze – created with a blend of Oreo florets, dot/dash linework, and playful pattern to combine the best of both worlds into something more bespoke. It’s not often you get to design a cookie – and we were were tasked with six. This came with navigating the many technicalities of balancing cookie mass, ensuring line weights can withstand ‘crumble’ and being mindful of how a design might fill in once baked, to ensure impact. In partnership with Saatchi and Saatchi, the cookies were made scannable – with each unique embossment allowing consumers to unlock special mazes, and prizes (if you beat the ghosts!) 

Visualisation was also it’s own challenge – bringing the cookie designs to life in full 3D glory was our next task – and with it came the opportunity to create a distinctive hero cookie embossment – with a wedge tactically removed to form the iconic PAC-MAN silhouette. This hero cookie then came to life across multiple touchpoints across the packaging, in-store, activation and campaign.

Using our distinctive Oreo Blue as a canvas, the packaging range sought to bring the maze to life more immediately, with our cookies at the heart of it, setting the scene for gameplay – and snack time. Using a digital design process allowed us to change the cookies shown on pack every time.

Engagement
Our packs and cookies were widely shared on social media – with the packs having clear disruption on shelf vs. the Original pack. the benefit of having six cookies with universal appeal is the collectability factor. The bigger challenge was to refrain from eating them on sight before collecting them all! Nostalgia never tasted so good.