Brand Watch: Oreo Shines at Target, Family Dollar

Mondelez International pulled out all the stops in 2023 to promote its latest limited-edition Oreo cookies at two national retailers.

The packs, featuring characters from Nintendo’s popular Super Mario games, were central to separate campaigns at Target and Family Dollar from July through early September. The target audience was shoppers at those retailers who have fond feelings for the Super Mario world, says Jennifer Mason, director of shopper marketing growth channels, at Mondelez.

“Research has demonstrated consumers are interested in nostalgia experiences through food; 76% of those aged 22-55 love eating things that remind them of their past,” Mason says. “Based on previous success from similar campaigns recognizing this insight, we wanted to once again take advantage of both the sentimentality and cross-generational fondness for Super Mario and Oreo cookies by creating a limited-edition product to remind shoppers of those nostalgic childhood feelings.”

As part of the Family Dollar campaign, Oreo had custom floorstands in 7,500 locations. At Target, Mondelez worked with the sales team on multiple in-store display locations to reach shoppers in and out of the cookie aisle, says Melissa Pitmon, customer manager for the shopper marketing Target team.

Each campaign had pre-shop content from solution provider Breaktime Media. Since the campaigns were running at Target and Family Dollar at the same time, each program had its own unique look and feel to drive purchase of the Oreo cookies. The experiences both had digital coupons to save on a purchase of the Super Mario cookies, with Target’s coupon being offered through its Circle loyalty program.

Both teams also staged robust retail media activity to help drive awareness and conversion with their retailer partners. Chesapeake Media Group, Family Dollar’s media network, amplified and drove awareness of the Oreo programming with banner ads throughout the Family Dollar app and posts on the retailer’s Facebook and Instagram pages. There were also off-platform banner ads via Aki Technologies. 

The Mondelez Target team partnered with Roundel, Target’s media network, to create a digital banner campaign that ran on Target.com and the Bullseye Marketplace with their off-site media partners, Pitmon says. The media plan included social display ad units on Pinterest and Facebook, partnering with Neptune Retail Solutions on an email and working with Vericast on an influencer program. The creative showcased the Super Mario cookie packaging and Mario and Luigi character imagery to drive awareness of the limited-edition products at Target. All banner ads drove to a product listing page so consumers could easily add the cookies to their digital shopping cart, Pitmon says.

The campaigns were successful at both retailers. Family Dollar saw double-digit unit and dollar sales increases versus prior year with the Oreo portfolio. At Family Dollar, the Breaktime Media experience resulted in tens of thousands of unique engagements with an average engagement time of more than two minutes, Mason says. The offer step of the campaign came in 53% above the Breaktime benchmark, with almost 100% of users clicking to take advantage of the offer. There was a nearly 100% interaction rate in the trivia step of the experience, which educated shoppers and kept them engaged with the brand.

“At Target, consumers spent an average time of one minute and 41 seconds engaging with the experience, and 82% of users added the product to cart, demonstrating fantastic purchase intent,” Pitmon says.

The Super Mario cookies were the top-selling limited-edition Oreo in 2023, Mason says. 

Other contributors to the campaigns were Mondelez agency partners VML and Phoenix Creative Co.