CASE STORY

In association with dentsu X Denmark, I brought together the brands of Oreo and DBU for a 360° marketing campaign, to coincide with the 2022 World Cup. With “Stay Playful“ as the tagline, the goal of the campaign was to create a playful way for Danes to support their football team through Gen Z’s most loved food brand, Oreo.

The leading actor behind the campaign was a digital game and contest, which aimed to drive engagement and awareness of the campaign, as well as motivate the audiences to interact/play with the collaboration.

To get the word out, campaign visuals such as social media banners, animations, and digital ads were created with Call-to-Action in mind, directing the target audience to the digital game landing page.

Design Process

DESIGN GUIDELINES

During the creation process, I aimed to develop a design guideline reminiscent of Oreo’s own style, and injected with references to football and DBU. The background colors for the visuals was created using a gradient of light and dark blue, similar to those found in Oreo’s logo, and familiar to previous campaign visuals, as seen below.

As many of Oreo’s previous campaigns rarely feature people, I also chose not to include any Danish football players in the visuals, despite the players being the symbol of DBU. No references were made to Qatar as well, to avoid the negative press surrounding the World Cup. The focus of the campaign (and visuals) was therefore solely on creating a fun way for Danes to support their team through Oreo.

KEY VISUAL COMPARISON

In the key visual above (right), an Oreo cookie is shown, revealing DBU’s logo which has replaced the cream inside the cookie. This is followed by the tagline “Stay Playful“ in a curved arc.

This is meant to showcase the collaboration between the two brands and symbolize DBU’s football values empowering Oreo from within, as well as Oreo being the sender.

Together with the tagline, “Stay Playful“ in white, the visual forms a smiley face, which is a homage to Oreo’s own iconic trademark—creating a smile using the cream—as seen in the left key visual above.

CAMPAIGN VISUALS

I created a series of banners and animations from the concept I developed — Oreos as footballs — to represent the brands of Oreo and DBU in a collaborative and playful manner.

With the digital game as the main focus behind the campaign, all animations/digital ads were equipped with CTAs, which aimed to encourage audiences to click the button, linking them to the digital game.

THE MAIN ACTOR BEHIND THE COLLABORATIVE CAMPAIGN

The digital game was designed with Playable in mind, and was based on their Drop Game. By catching falling items on the screen, players will either gain points for catching the falling Oreos, or lose points, if they catch any red/yellow cards.

The goal or “hat“ used to catch the falling items, is also a Danish icon, typically worn by Danish football fans during their matches, and resembles a viking helm. The inclusion of this hat is meant to symbolize DBU/Denmark, and by catching the Oreos adorned with DBU’s logo, players gain bonus points.

TONE OF VOICE

The tone of voice used in the campaign ads was competitive, and aimed to challenge as well as encourage the target audience to participate in the fictional contest, where they would compete for the “main prize” — a trip to the World Cup in Qatar. In addition, players would be able to share their scores on social media, further promoting the digital game.

As mentioned, a digital ad was created specifically to showcase the game in action and demonstrate how it worked, finishing off with motivational messages and a Call-to-Action button linking to the actual game.

Key Takeaways

CAMPAIGN COLLABORATION CONCEPT

The entire campaign was based on a fictional Oreo X DBU collaboration. Therefore, I had full creative freedom to develop a concept that captured the essence of both brands.

OREO’S DESIGN GUIDELINES

Despite the campaign being entirely conceptual, my goal was to make the campaign materials appear as realistic as possible — as if they were produced by Oreo themselves — by opting for a visual direction similar to Oreo’s past campaign visuals. This was reflected in the color usage, designing fun and “playful“ animations, and choosing a digital game as the center of the campaign, which enabled the audiences to play/experience the collaboration.

TIMELINE & TESTING

All the final campaign materials (6) were developed in the 1-week time frame, which made it difficult to conduct any sort of testing (i.e. A/B testing) to understand the target audience’s preferences.

However, I was able to create different concepts early on, which I presented to a very limited sample pool of friends to hear their thoughts, what they liked/didn’t like, and what their impression were of the two brands. This greatly helped me in determining the art direction for the campaign, and resulted in the idea of Oreos as footballs which became the overall theme.