What makes an Oreo an Oreo?
So many IP things to blog about, so much to catch up on … I’ll start with this:
If an Oreo isn’t round and black and white and crazy sweet, is it still an Oreo? What is the essence of Oreoness?
What the Chinese team at Kraft figured out is that an Oreo is an experience. You pry it apart, scrape out the filling with your teeth and plop it into a glass of milk. Their shorthand for the concept: “Twist, Lick, Dunk.” All the wild new shapes and flavors of Oreo wouldn’t work in China, unless they could somehow share that same experience.
Full story here. For those few of us who enjoy thinking about the roles and histories of “things,” this is an entertaining and instructive tale.
Every time I go to the store and see shelves of Oreos increasingly in various colors and combinations (usually correspondent with an upcoming holiday), I think about potential brand weakening. It is interesting to see that, at least in this article, they seem to be focusing their “goodwill” now more on the experience than the color and composition of the cookie. In that vein, I wonder about the Oreo Cakester, which as I recall is made of spongy “cookies” and a cream filling similar to that of a Hostess cupcake, and I don’t think is well suited for the “Twist. Lick. Dunk.” experience. (It’s been awhile, though, so I might be wrong about that.)
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