Hey everyone!

The company that I will be analysing is Oreo. I’m sure that many of us are familiar with this brand, best known for its chocolate sandwich cookies containing crème fillings. I will be analysing the effectiveness of its social media platforms in conjunction with how it can expand and increase sales in the Asia Pacific region.

To begin with, Oreo originated more than a century ago in 1912 and has been dominating the global market in cookie sales ever since, so much that its sales are triple that of other cookie brands. However, while it has dominated world sales, its operating income (a.k.a. operating profits) remain the lowest in the Asia Pacific. Hence, my proposed strategies will be crafted to increase profit in this region.

With this, I aim to find out how effective Oreo’s current social media platforms and strategies are in appealing to its consumers, as well as how it can increase profits in the Asia Pacific through improved social media engagement.

To sum up my analysis of Oreo’s use of social media platforms, it was identified that both Facebook and Twitter were used mainly to showcase images and videos that reinforce Oreo’s reputation as a fun, family-friendly community, as well as serve as channels for Oreo to engage with both fans and famous artists such as Adam Lambert, who collaborated with Oreo for an advertisement. This can be attributed to Facebook and Twitter’s reply functions which enables the company to directly reply to specific messages. On the other hand, Instagram mainly served as a broadcasting channel, for fans to take note of new products or campaigns, as well as give fans a break from life with aesthetically pleasing photos with reference to Oreo products. This is due to Instagram being a visual platform with this concept.

Along with the analysis of two other campaigns that Oreo had introduced, Oreo has managed to effectively appeal to the consumers through events and ideas that are relevant to them. Consumers look to Oreo as a fun, family-friendly community that has the ability to generate interest and buzz and their campaigns have proved to be successful in helping Oreo maintain its position as the number one cookie worldwide.

However, despite having such success, most of Oreo’s campaigns and products are only limited to America, resulting in much lower sales in the Asia Pacific region. To enhance sales in Asia, some suggestions I have are as follow:

• Facebook – #myOREOway campaign, where fans in the Asia Pacific can suggest flavors they wish to see in stores and the top three posts with the most likes will be able to have their suggested flavors sold in stores for a period of time.
• Instagram – #OreoPleasures Showcase, where fans can showcase their Oreo recipes and creations on Instagram and the best ones will be sold at the showcase. The fans who created the recipes will also be invited down to the event as brand ambassadors.

To sum up, the two suggested strategies will encompass social media elements such as user-generated content to better engage the fans. Throughout the process, the strategies will also enhance exposure to Oreo and create curiosity to non-fans, leading to greater sales and thus profits in the long run.

Thank you!

Amanda Lee