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. Being a young brand in Europe, part of their growth strategy has been to carve a space for themselves within seasonal occasions, and to do that, our challenge is always to find a relatable insight or ritual – universally understood across multilingual European markets – that ensures our distinctive cookies can play the hero in all seasonal stories we tell. The orange creme inside – unique to our Halloween cookies – also gives us a naturally spooky asset to play with. Something that we knew needed to be part of the storytelling.

Challenge
Considering that context, we were challenged to create a new vision for Oreo’s Halloween identity. The bundle would include cookie embossments, a Spooky identity, pack design, in-store key visuals, and social activation to launch the new identity. Critical to the task was to tread the fine line between ‘spooky’ and ‘scary’; ensuring we projected Oreo’s signature playful spirit; and balancing that with unapologetic taste appeal. So unapologetic, that throughout our comms, we wanted to dare consumers to simply ‘Try A Bite.’

Inspiration
Having an orange creme to play with effortlessly led us to pumpkins. The ritual of carving them, which inspired our trio of spooky embossments. And the idea that pumpkin carvings (and our spooky personalities) only come to life when illuminated – inspiring the spirit in which we showcased them across pack, key visuals, activation and motion.

Design
Our visual language was inspired by ‘the carve.’ Characterful, chunky typography, spiky-edged (and mildly menacing) cookie embossments, and the supporting graphic elements came from here. Setting the scene was easier – everyone knows that pumpkins live in the pumpkin patch. Grounding our cookies there allowed us to introduce the familiar cues of Halloween, to support the Spooky occasion.

Social Activation
Our launch activation was all about unleashing our trio of cookies on the world. We could really bring our vision of bringing our cookie carvings to life through motion – illuminating them with the orange creme and playing with different light sources and shadow to reveal each personality.

We could see the risk of our Spooky cookies being perceived as pumpkin-flavoured, and so it was key to ensure that the iconic Vanilla flavour was impactful on pack, and clearly tied to the creme throughout activation. It also allowed us to have a little more fun with our messaging across Social by leaning into that possible flavour perception – communicating on the point that our cookies are a Trick and a Treat! Orange coloured, Vanilla flavoured.

Whilst we have comfortable timeframes, captions and a captive audience to support most of our social comms – YouTube Bumpers pose a harder challenge. Within 6 seconds, our challenge was to convey the Oreo brand strongly, the three new cookies, the limited-edition pack, the call-to-action, and the Halloween occasion, plus try and retain our ‘reveal’ concept.