I love Oreos. You love Oreos. We all love Oreos. However, we rarely see this cream-filled goodie as a disruptive or innovative product. After all, the shape, colour, and taste of Oreos have basically stayed the same for the last 100 years.

Mondelez International: Parent Company to brands such as Oreo and Cote D’or

Well, what Oreo (Parent Company: Mondelez International) lacks in innovation, it makes up through marketing. In the recent past, Oreo has been flooding the media with creative, attention-gathering, and occasionally controversial ads. Twitter shows that Oreo Cookie@oreo has as of date made 22.9K tweets with 777K followers. 3 years ago Oreo posted an image of an Oreo cookie with multi-colored stacks of cream on Facebook. This post went viral, with over 200,000 likes and 90,000 shares.

Oreo’s LGBTQ Cookie

The insight I have gained from this is that, a company can be disruptive in many ways. The Oreo cookie essentially stayed the same, but through creative positioning (supporting LGBTQ, which has gained momentum in the last few years), Oreo has positioned itself as a favoured company in the eyes of many, gained publicity and most likely created a strong brand following. The power of positioning has allowed Oreo to tip the advantage in its favor, which I see as disruptive and most certainly innovative.

Links

• Hsu, Tiffany. “Gay Pride Rainbow Oreo Sparks 20,000 Facebook Comments, Debate.” Los Angeles Times. LA Times, 26 June 2012. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. <http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/26/business/la-fi-mo-gay-pride-oreo-20120626>.
• Oreo. Twitter. Twitter, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. <https://twitter.com/Oreo>.
• Bingham, Amy. “Oreo Pride: Rainbow-Stuffed Cookie Sparks Boycott.” ABC News, 26 June 2012. Web. 20 Nov. 2015. <http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/06/oreo-pride-rainbow-stuffed-cookie-sparks-boycott/>.