Context
Oreo is the world’s most Playful cookie, and every year it defends that status by teaming up with culturally resonant, loved brands. 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 entertainment snack of choice, Oreo teamed up with a universal icon of gaming, now venturing onto the big screen – A Minecraft Movie.

Challenge
Our brief was to create a unique visual identity for this partnership, blending Oreo’s iconic circular aesthetic, with Minecraft’s distinctive square one – across four bespoke cookie embossments and limited-edition packaging, for multiple European markets. One of our biggest considerations was to ensure that the partnership, pack and cookie concepts all referenced the live action film, and not the world of the game – but with a limited view of the movie’s plot. Therefore, we had to envision concepts that were likely to feature, and to imagine assets, which would feel relevant to the brand worlds we were working with, and technically achievable for our packaging print constraints.

Design
We started with the cookies, and the ambition to make them Objects of Desire in their own right. To bridge the two brand worlds, we created a bespoke block-inspired iconography style and visualised fan-favourite icons. This came with navigating the many technicalities of balancing cookie mass, ensuring line weights able to create impact and withstand ‘crumble’ and being mindful of how a design might fill in once baked. This was also our first time really pushing the limits of how much of the cookie surface could be embossed with intricacy in the negative space. 

Collaborating with Saatchi and Saatchi, the cookies were made scannable – allowing consumers to unlock an interactive AR world.

Bringing the cookie designs to life in full 3D glory was our next task – and with it came the opportunity to imagine how the cookie would appear and interact in the Minecraft world. The idea of the round cookie being formed out of tasty pixels felt surprisingly effortless – and this hero cookie came to life across multiple touchpoints – packaging, in-store, activation and campaign.

The second challenge was to create packaging that celebrated the cookies while hinting at the movie’s storytelling. Inspired by Minecraft’s key concepts, we landed on ‘the portal’ as a device to ground the design and champion our cookies. When we were asked to integrate The Creeper (within strict constraints) it gave us an unexpectedly fun sign off to the pack communication, and an additional asset to our identity toolkit.

Animation allowed us to really bring the identity, and the origin story of our block cookies to life, with energy, precision, and a lot of tasty pixels.

Engagement & Impact
Our packs and cookies were widely distributed across cinemas, and shared on social media – with the packs having clear disruption on shelf vs. the Original, and the cookies achieving ‘Object of Desire’ status. The assets were implemented by local market teams across the Europe-wide campaign within OOH, digital and in-store touchpoints. The overall result was an identity that felt playful and suitably cinematic – defending Oreo’s status as the world’s most playful cookie.