Oreo is counting on limited-edition cookies like its Coca-Cola flavour to drive new customers to the snack aisle. Oreo sees limited-edition products as a way to expand beyond its usual customer base. In fact, 28% of people who buy limited-edition Oreos don’t buy regular Oreos, Rachel Lawson, director of shopper marketing at Mondelēz International, Oreo’s parent company, told Modern Retail. What’s more, between 15% and 17% of people who bought Oreo’s Space Dunk edition at grocery stores in February hadn’t purchased an Oreo at those locations in more than two years.
Limited-edition Oreos are a key part of the brand’s customer acquisition strategy, as well as its sales playbook. Though Oreo sells more regular Oreos than limited-edition Oreos, it sees a jump in demand for its core flavours when it has a splashy new SKU. “In a way, the limited edition is an opportunity to remind shoppers about Oreo in general,” Lawson said. “The limited edition is a stopping power, but the intention is for you to buy an Oreo.”
This strategy appears to be working; while Mondelēz’s sales as a whole are slightly down, customers continue to pile their carts with Oreos. Oreo is “gaining share year-to-date” in the U.S., Mondelēz CEO Dirk Van de Put said on an earnings call in July. Oreo is also “driving incremental lift” through its limited editions, he noted. “We’re planning some more exciting, but still top secret, collaborations for the remainder of this year and into 2025,” Van de Put added.
Oreo tends to launch limited editions every month or every other month. So far, in 2024, it’s had multiple flavors: Coca-Cola, Mint Chip, ‘Star Wars’, Sour Patch Kids, Churro, Tiramisu, Dirt Cake and Space Dunk. Past editions include ‘Pokémon’, Maple Cream, Brookie-O and Strawberry Frosted Donut. In April 2023, Oreo rolled out a special Blackpink Oreo in seven Asian markets, including Vietnam and Thailand.
Oreo sells limited editions via most major supermarkets, as well as through Target, Instacart, UberEats and Amazon. It defines limited editions as non-permanent flavours or ones it doesn’t plan to launch again in the future. There’s no minimum count for Oreo cookies to be considered limited editions. However, most stay on shelves for up to six to eight weeks. Some versions, like Oreo’s collaboration with Coca-Cola, extend to merchandise like T-shirts and hoodies that fans can buy online. The flavours tend to be popular on resale sites; a Supreme x Oreo collaboration in 2020 once went for upwards of $90,000 on eBay.
Many of Oreo’s limited editions involve new textures and colours. The Oreo x ‘Star Wars’ collaboration, for example, comes in two versions: the “light side” (Oreos with blue filling) or the “dark side” (Oreos with red filling). The Oreo x Coca-Cola collaboration, on the other hand, includes popping candies to mirror the fizziness of the soda. One of the cookies is red, a reference to Coca-Cola’s logo.
Oreo is focusing on limited-edition cookies at the same time that the snack market is getting more crowded. According to Gartner, heading into 2023, nearly half (46%) of US consumers said they had purchased a new product or a new brand in the last year, up from 29% in 2021. A lot of this comes back to cost-cutting, pointed out Brad Jashinsky, a director analyst at Gartner. Many shoppers are still watching their budgets, and private labels like Trader Joe’s and Signature have their own versions of crackers and cookies that tend to cost less than name brands.
“If [another brand] is $1 cheaper than an Oreo, how do you compete with that?” Jashinsky told Modern Retail. “I think these collaborations, new flavours and unique designs provide another reason to stick with the Oreo brand rather than the store brand.”
To that point, it’s important that customers are aware of the limited editions and where they can buy them, Lawson said. For this, her team relies on retail media. They flag the new editions in stores and online using a mix of signage, end caps, digital ads and in-store radio.
Since Oreo’s limited-edition SKUs lift sales overall, Oreo displays the products alongside other Oreos on shelves. Its digital banners link to a landing page that displays multiple Oreo products. Its ads for seasonal Oreos, such as its cookies for Halloween, also tie back to other Nabisco products. All of these tactics “drive sales,” Lawson said, although she declined to cite specific numbers.
To spread the word even more, Oreo has started holding more in-store activations around its limited editions. Earlier this year, Lawson’s team hosted an Oreo x “Star Wars” event at a Stop & Shop, Giant Food and Hannaford Bros location. In each store, fans could take their picture with Stuffy, the Oreo mascot. At the Stop & Shop and the Giant Food, attendees could enter sweepstakes to win free “Star Wars” Oreos, a “Star Wars” lightsaber and a retailer gift certificate. “For a lot of people, a lot of the fun and playfulness of Oreo comes through limited editions,” Lawson said.
