With a mission to drive trial and make Oreo a more iconic brand in the hearts and minds of Brits, PHD used the first solar eclipse in the UK for 16 years as an opportunity to connect with a moment of cultural significance.

1. Newsworks Planning Awards 2015
Category: Omnimedia
Oreo is still a relatively new brand
in the UK and must continue to fight for
space in consumers’ hearts and minds.
IPSOS, March 2015.
Source: Brands Live/IPSOS March, 2015.
“ “Background
and Objectives
In the US, Oreo is a fundamental part of the ‘milk and
cookie’ culture and is one of the country’s most famous
brands.
But here – as the IPSOS report quoted, right, states – it’s still
a relatively recent addition to Britain’s traditionally beige
biscuit repertoire.
Indeed, Oreo enjoys just 10% of the unprompted awareness
and 40% less trial than the UK’s market leader.
With a mission to drive trial and make Oreo a more iconic
brand in the hearts and minds of Brits, we looked to the
skies for inspiration.
And found it.
10%Unprompted awareness
40%Less trial
Insight a.k.a ‘why we did what we did’
The first solar eclipse in the UK for 16 years was the
perfect event for Oreo to make a connection with a
moment of cultural significance and drive trial (it was
also one that, handily, also looked like the product
itself).
We knew that if you want to immerse yourself in the
heart of British culture, then few things get the media
more excited than stoking up a major weather story.
So on March 20th, 2015 - while an excited UK collectively
looked to the skies - we would put Oreo in full view with
our own #OreoEclipse.
We suspected that the eclipse would see other brands
settle for opportunistic social media stunts. To make a
genuine impact on shoppers and drive trial, the Oreo
Eclipse couldn’t be that. It needed to be a high-profile
event, executed at scale.
This was especially important in this instance because
the idea didn’t come from a client brief.
To execute it, we would need our Oreo clients to secure
additional budget that wasn’t in their annual plan.

2. In today’s climate, clients have little appetite for ‘vanity’
campaigns that make noise but don’t deliver results, so
whilst our Oreo Eclipse needed to entertain and engage
– first and foremost it had to deliver a level of scale and
impact that would stimulate sales.
That meant that BEFORE we sold the idea to the client,
we had to both ensure scale AND iron out the
executional complexities of making it happen.
Across the day on March 20th, the Oreo Eclipse would
roll out in meticulously timed stages
• Pt. 1 from 5 a.m. - Delivering mass impact by literally
eclipsing The Sun with a translucent cover wrap of
the UK’s biggest selling newspaper
• Pt.2 from 8.25 a.m. - Creating an outdoor spectacle
of our own to mirror the real thing with a real-time
digital outdoor Oreo Eclipse
• Pt. 3 from 11.45 a.m. – Making sure that our Oreo
Eclipse lasted all day by using assets from the first
two stages to creating new digital assets that would
amplify the Oreo Eclipse for the remainder of the day
We presented the plan to the client, who loved it and
then successfully secured the additional budget
required.
The Oreo Eclipse was born.
From 5 a.m.
Literally eclipsing
The Sun
From 08.25 a.m.
A real-time
Oreo Eclipse
From 11.45 a.m.
Making the Oreo
Eclipse last all day
The Plan Pt.1 – 5 a.m. Literally eclipsing The Sun
On March 20th, we started the day by quite literally
eclipsing The Sun, covering more than 2m copies of Britain’s
biggest selling newspaper with its first ever translucent
cover wrap.
Covering the all-important front page headline of Britain’s
biggest selling newspaper isn’t an easy sell.
It required painstaking logistical, reproduction and paper
procurement planning from News UK’s commercial team,
PHD and our creative partners just to get the idea fully
formed enough to sell to The Sun’s editor – who, thankfully,
loved the idea.
As the translucent paper had to be specially ordered in
bulk, we were also able to negotiate two additional special
translucent Oreo Eclipse ads inside the paper for no extra
cost, whilst minimising paper waste.
In addition to the 2 million printed editions, Oreo also took
over thesun.co.uk for the duration of the eclipse.

3. Across the actual duration of the
eclipse, specially created digital
outdoor sites used Oreos to re-
create the Eclipse happening in the
sky above them in real-time.
We achieved this by inputting Royal
Astronomical Society data into the
sites to allow them to mirror the
exact timings and trajectory of the
sun and moon on the screens.
This wasn’t straightforward. Even
though we’re a relatively small
island, the timings of the eclipse
differed across the country and our
data needed to pinpoint the
eclipse’s movement in each location
(for example, the eclipse started 5
minutes later in Edinburgh than it
did in London).
The Plan Pt2. – 8.25 a.m. A real-time Oreo Eclipse
To ensure that the UK was talking about our eclipse long
after Mother Nature’s had finished, dedicated film crews
were dispatched to each digital outdoor site to capture
them on time lapse video.
The entire cycle of the eclipse at each location was then
edited into a 10 second film and they were all distributed
through social media WITHIN AN HOUR of the eclipse’s
completion – giving the campaign a new life for a wider
audience on a very different kind of screen whilst the UK
was still talking about what it had just seen (or hadn’t).
Combined with the organic social media reaction that our
cover wrap of The Sun had created earlier, the time lapse
video content increased the scale of the Oreo Eclipse
further through paid-for activity on Facebook and a
Promoted Trend on Twitter.
The Plan Pt3. – 11.45 a.m. A new life online

4. DID WE ACHIEVE THE OREO ECLIPSE AT SCALE?
Yes. We had gone beyond it merely being a tactical stunt – 20m people saw our #OreoEclipse in just
one day and news of the campaign was covered by over 20 different publications – with coverage
travelling across the globe.
DID OREO ENHANCE THE UK’S ENJOYMENT OF THE ECLIPSE?
Yes. As anyone who lives in the SE of England will remember, the weather in most of the UK made the
spectacle, well, less spectacular. For many people, the #OreoEclipse was the ONLY one they enjoyed
on March 20th.
WHAT KIND OF IMPACT DID THE SUN WRAP HAVE?
In ADDITION to buyers of The Sun, wrapping its cover ensured that 4.1m more newspaper readers
saw our activity on March 20th.
Post-campaign research showed:
• 25% of ALL newspaper buyers (not just The Sun readers) remembered seeing the Oreo cover on
March 20th
• 76% of The Sun readers spontaneously recalled Oreo in post-campaign research
• And that readers of The Sun were 17% more likely to buy Oreos as a result.
Source: Differentology/News UK
The Oreo Eclipse was a campaign where everyone won.
Results
By giving Brits the eclipse that Mother Nature denied most of us, we’d driven vital product trial and had made
Oreo the star of the celestial event of the decade.