Oreo-e-o, Like, Like, Like

By Nicole Fletcher

In watching a recording of a social media conference, I learned some pretty interesting things about Oreo’s social standpoint and some facts that may very well blow your socks off.

This conference took place on August 11, 2010 – the speaker began by expressing her feigned annoyance in that while she started putting together the presentation a few weeks earlier, she was forced to consistently edit it as a result of Oreo’s staggering fan growth. Okay, I thought, I get it. Oreo wants their information to be the most recent, the most impressive, they want to report the biggest numbers possible. Then she noted a fan increase of 200,000 … overnight. After picking my jaw up off the floor I frantically surfed to Oreo’s fan page. This speaker noted the number of fans to have been 8.4 million in early August. It’s now December. Oreo boasts an astonishing 16 million fans. You heard me correctly friends; Oreo doubled their fans in 4 months. Party on Oreo.

The speaker went on to discuss the brand’s social media standpoint. As she dove deeper into their strategy and standpoint, she noted that ALL marketing exploits push traffic to the company’s facebook page; not their homepage. This new age statement means that all banner ads, campaigns, everything pushes to facebook. Interesting. She continued to explain that the Oreo url is still alive and kicking and indeed serves its purposes for SEO and Google search, but when it comes down to it, Oreo wants to “fish where the fish are”. Here’s another company as an example: CocaCola’s homepage sees 348,000 unique views monthly. Sounds pretty solid right? Well, when compared to daily interactions with their 21 million + fans, the good ol’ www loses some of its allure, doesn’t it?

This goes back to an earlier post about discovering your target market and where it hangs out online. Oreo’s primary demographic is who? Moms and kids right? Right. 93.3% of moms are part of some social networking site and seeing as facebook is the biggest, by a long shot, you should probably start there.

This year, social networking trumped both online gaming and, wait for it, EMAIL. You heard me folks, social media outfoxed the good old electronic mail, which is probably why one of facebook’s latest projects involves re-doing it.

Regardless, Oreo sees social media not as a short term sales driver, though that is certainly a fortunate side affect, but as a long term brand management plan. The book of faces has wiggled its way into the top spot, so get ready for it world and market accordingly.

Watch the video I watched, HERE.

In case you don’t get the Vanilla Ice reference in the title, enjoy.