Oreo VP of marketing on Post Malone cookie and partnerships

Oreo has collaborated with Post Malone on a new cookie variety meant to connect with the singer’s fans and Gen Z more broadly. The new Oreos have salted caramel and shortbread-flavored cremes swirled together and sandwiched between a chocolate and golden cookie. (The swirled creme is a first for Oreo.) The Oreos are embossed with one of nine different images picked by Malone to represent his discography and career, including a vinyl, guitar pick, chain, saw blade, flaming guitar, a sunflower (a nod to his “Sunflower” song), a butterfly (representing the album “12 Carat Toothache”), a knight on horseback (to represent the song “Circles”) and a pickup truck (like the one on the cover of his 2024 album “F-1 Trillion”). The packaging will also have a handwritten signed note from Malone. Oreo worked with Dentsu to roll out the new cookie, which will hit stores in early February. “Partnerships have become a mainstay of our playbook,” said Michelle Deignan, VP of marketing for Oreo U.S. at Mondelēz International. “We look at consumer trends and who will fit the brand ethos of ‘playfully provocative’ to put us in the cultural zeitgeist. Post’s playfulness comes through in his self-expression and he has a way of bringing together genres that just felt very right.” From 2024: Oreos and Coke team up on cross-branded products This is not Oreo’s first celebrity singer deal. The brand worked with Lady Gaga in early 2021 on pink Oreos with green creme in honor of Gaga’s “Chromatica” album. The cookies featured three embossments related to the album—a heart, the word “Chromatica” and a dancing woman. ⚔️ LADY GAGA x @OREO x #Chromatica 💓 Dropping soon! pic.twitter.com/Gtd5qeZXZi— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) December 2, 2020 Oreo is using the Malone partnership to learn more about the music preferences of consumers. Customers can scan a QR code on the back of the package to be taken to a website that will ask them about their music tastes, after which they will be told what Oreo cookie combo matches their preferences. Visitors will need to enter their name and email to access the experience, and then can opt-in to be entered into the “Taste Twist” sweepstakes. The winner will be sent a package of their music-based Oreo. The Post Malone cookies will be available for presale starting Jan. 27 on Oreo’s website, and fans can sign up for early access at Oreo.com/unwrapthecollab. They will hit shelves nationwide on Feb. 3 and are available while supplies last. Malone is no stranger to food deals, having worked with Poppi on a wild berry flavor, Raising Cane’s and Bud Light, and creating his own rosé. Ad Age caught up with Deignan to learn more about Oreo’s partnership strategy, media mix, why it is not running a Super Bowl ad this year after returning to the game last year and if it plans to follow last year’s Oreo x Coke collab. Oreo will run digital and social ads in the coming weeks, releasing a teaser of the spot with Malone as a miner looking for the best Oreo nugget. NextGen Marketing Summit Join us for a crash course on Gen Z, DTC marketing and the creator economy Register today This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. Why have partnerships become a staple in your marketing strategy? They really do a few things for us when done the right way with playfulness. They reinforce our brand. We get a lot of retailer and consumer excitement when we have a new partnership. Our partnerships bring in more than 20% of consumers. They might not buy Oreos regularly, but maybe they see the Star Wars collab and must have it and then stay with the brand. We are also really looking at bringing Gen Z into the franchise. We do want to appeal more broadly, but Gen Z is a real focus and one of the reasons Post Malone was a perfect partner. What customer data tells you these will resonate? Mondelēz did a global consumer survey in 2024 looking at snacking trends and found that consumers wanted more novel and adventurous flavors. Partnerships are part of meeting those. Our recent Coke and Oreo collaboration is a perfect example of this. We were thrilled with the Coke and Oreo collab and some people might not think that flavor would work, but it did. It was also about iconicity. Partnering with a brand like Coke was a privilege. It exceeded our expectations and was executed in more than 60 countries. It delivered a level and scale of conversion for us that was above our internal expectations. There is no shortage of research that we do internally as we look at what is going on with consumers. We also spend a lot of time talking to consumers through formal and informal means. Just this year we showed them over 100 potential partners we could work with and asked who best fit with Oreo based on playfulness, modernity and shifting equity. Next week I’m going to shop alongs with consumers, which is such a privilege. It’s great to put ourselves in their shoes. Do you plan to follow the Coke x Oreo collaboration? I think you will definitely see more partnerships and unique flavors and we will continue to push the brand and show up where consumers are. What is Oreo’s media mix and where are you seeing good ROI? We strive to continue to follow our consumers and there is still a very valid role for all media so we build reach across the spectrum. But it’s no surprise that digital and social continue to grow industry-wide. We also sometimes crowdsource flavors based on what we see online to meet that expectation for newness and difference. Why not run a Super Bowl ad this year? We are trying to be a little unexpected so we don’t always want to do the same thing. As we kept talking with Post and saw the potential of this partnership, we wanted to give that room to breathe and be successful in its own right. But Ritz is appearing and we could not be more excited for them. (Mondelēz owns Ritz.) What trends are you watching? The biggest thing on our mind is the consumer and how constrained they are with their level of disposable income. That is going to be important for us as marketers to give them a reason to buy us by having the right packs. What we have seen, even in the last year, is that partnership can help deliver on that. Even low-income consumers have responded to those and come into the brand.

Oreo’s VP of marketing on new Post Malone cookie and partnership strategy

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