When Kraft Foods brought Oreo cookies to China in 1996, everyone expected the iconic black and white cookie to succeed, but sales were mediocre. So the company made a surprising decision, one that has made Oreos the number-one selling cookie in China today.
Kraft started by playing around with the cookie's design and flavor, releasing cookies shaped like wafers or straws, and filled with tea-flavored cream tinted green or bright orange-mango filling. With no nostalgia for Oreos, consumers wouldn't be bothered by tweaks to the original.
But this lack of nostalgia was also a problem; the appeal of eating an Oreo is due in part to the tactile experience, says Kraft.
You pry it apart, scrape out the filling with your teeth and plop it into a glass of milk. Their shorthand for the concept: "Twist, Lick, Dunk." All the wild new shapes and flavors of Oreo wouldn't work in China, unless they could somehow share that same experience.
So they released a series of heart-tugging TV ads featuring cute children teaching adults how to twist, lick and dunk their cookies. Sales doubled, and doubled again. Oreo nostalgia is alive and well in China, along with those unfamiliar straw-shaped and green-tea-flavored Oreos.
Read the full story: Rethinking The Oreo For Chinese Consumers at NPR
Would you want to try a redesigned Oreo or are you true to the original?
Related: The Cookie Designers: Oreo Cookies and Architecture
(Image: Kraft Foods)
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Being of Chinese origin myself, it makes complete sense. The classic cookie-like snacks that I grew up with were either stick-shaped (Pocky, for example) or wafers (I can taste the lemon-filled ones now). Gotta get my hands on some of these straw-shaped Oreos now...
I would love to try the green tea or mango flavored straws, yum! But only in addition to the original, not as a replacement.
I'm not a fan of oreos but I want to try the flavored straws. Those look cool. And even my dad eats straws and wafers and he doesn't really eat anything snack wise.
Where does one get the straw tea flavored versions. I don't like normal oreos, but those sound amazing.
We are from Chicago but have been visiting China for a week now and have already tried the oreo sticks - they are good, I think I like them more than the cookies.
Huh? These were available in Canada for awhile. Didn't take off, though.
I listened to this segment on NPR and thought it was fascinating. I liked the sound bites from the Chinese commercials. It is so interesting to see how the emotional connection with a product doesn't necessarily translate to another culture.