In this guest article, Mondelez World Travel Retail Head of Customer Marketing Beatriz de Otto highlights the power of social media for building brands, and singles out the successful campaign to launch the Oreo Café at Hamad International Airport.
With the start of a new year comes renewed determination to push the boundaries of the confectionery category within travel retail. Part of achieving this is to continually deliver enticing, exciting and unique experiences.
2022 was the year of many feats. Notably, it was the first time Mondelez World Travel Retail (WTR) ventured into food & beverage with the launch of the Oreo Café. By going beyond the bite, by venturing into a new market and by utilising social media, we understand how and why the curation and delivery of a 360-brand experience creates brand awareness.
In a quaternity with Qatar Duty Free (QDF), Hamad International Airport (HIA) and Qatar Airways, the Oreo Café – a first of its kind within the travel retail space – opened its doors in early November 2022 and with it, a world of opportunity for Mondelez WTR to elevate confectionery and brand awareness across various platforms.
In our industry, innovation and advancement are key to staying relevant and building on our years of success. That is why we announced our renewed focus and the evolution of our category vision to drive accelerated conversion. ‘Delighting Travelers’ is more than a slogan. It’s a decade-old vision that shaped the way we approached the future of confectionery – ‘the Category of the Future’ –pushing us beyond simply selling a product. Now, we modernise this vision by delighting travellers with one-of-a-kind experiences that are enhanced by dynamic and holistic digital experiences.
Digital experience is an incredibly important pillar for Mondelez WTR as we look to realise our category vision, and we have seen first-hand how delivering unique experiences can expand our brands’ digital footprints and increase engagement.
The launch and marketing campaign of the Oreo Café serves as a great case study on how digital innovation facilitates the delivery of bespoke consumer experiences within travel retail. Before a travelling consumer begins their journey, a captivating social media campaign filled with delicious imagery introduces them to the existence of the Oreo Café.
Whilst on board Qatar Airways, passengers enjoy an inflight video campaign that informs and invites travellers to the Oreo Café. Upon arrival, digital screens direct them to the café. Through this, Mondelez WTR and partners ensure they connect with the consumer at every stage of their journey, delighting travellers from start to finish as they guide them to and through a unique experience.
Social media impact in numbers
Across every digital platform, the launch campaign exceeded expectations in reach and engagement. On Facebook and Instagram, advertisements delivered over 12.5 million impressions, +506% over delivery. Snapchat scored 6.6 million impressions, +264% over delivery. TikTok brought in 2.9 million impressions, +104% over delivery.
With over 20 million impressions and results that were +270% above what was expected, the campaign brought in exceptionally high return on advertisement investment. We achieved outstanding brand awareness with increased reach – more people seeing our post – and impressions – people seeing our posts more often – whilst building mental availability of the brand.
Building on the excitement of the social media campaign and in line with our holistic approach, on 6 March, in collaboration with HIA and QDF, we ran a full-scale digital airport takeover in celebration of Oreo Day. The end-to-end digital communication campaign ran across more than 800 screens, creating a tangible buzz and fanfare that could only be experienced within travel retail.
The campaign invited travellers to celebrate the world’s favourite cookie in all its delicious forms at its new airport home and created a powerful moment for us to connect with consumers through creative digital mediums.
Going forward, this campaign sets the benchmark of success for all future Mondelez WTR digital campaigns as it proves that unique experiences can deliver impactful brand awareness. For the Oreo Café, mental availability and awareness worked together to result in high traffic and footfall to the café, making the milkshake the number one item on the menu.
The remarkable engagement with the Oreo Café content underlines Mondelez WTR as a leader in unique travel retail experiences. Other examples include our global Cadbury FC tour, hosted in the lead up to the World Cup 2022 and showcasing the first ever laser-etched Cadbury chocolate bars; and the highly popular Toblerone-sleeve printer that allows travellers to personalise messages onto its iconic gold packaging.
Like the Oreo Café, these travel retail exclusive brand encounters create shareable moments that led to social media moments. Travellers are encouraged to take photos via various touchpoints with many of these images finding their way online accompanied with Oreo and Doha hashtags. Organic user-generated content is also powerful, as it can spur a social media moment.
A powerful way to reach Gen Z
Social media moments are what we at Mondelez WTR want to achieve more of. We believe in impactful brand awareness, and we measure impact by the moment it creates. According to m1nd-set, Gen Z consumers account for one third of the population. They are the first generation to grow up among social media; naturally, it’s where they spend most of their time searching for product information and consuming content.
Using our consumer-driven insights, Mondelez WTR puts platforms like TikTok and Instagram at the heart of our digital campaigns as it gives us a direct connection to Gen Z, a generation that enjoys instant gratification and in-store experiences. Our industry research further tells us that, for this generation, status is dictated more by experience rather than what you own.
Travelling consumers who showcase their experiences can intrigue, inspire and entice others to, for example, visit an exclusive Oreo Café on their next journey.
Connectivity means many different things, but at its heart it’s about bringing people together. Connecting to the consumer has never been more important, especially at a time where the industry is competing for the consumer’s attention.
It is crucial that we pre-emptively reach the traveller before they come to us. Digital tools enable us to achieve this and connect to the travelling consumer directly through their mobile phones. That is why Mondelez WTR is dedicated to constant digital innovation, a pillar that helped us produce resounding success for the launch of the Oreo Café.
By understanding the behaviour of social media users, namely Gen Z and Millennials, we see “Experience as an identity”, which drives our tangible and digital efforts to deliver unique encounters on and off the screen.
We understand the beating heart of social media is human connectivity. People share their lives online because they can express themselves: their tastes, relationships, hobbies, emotions, beliefs and more.
Experiences serve a dual purpose in contemporary times. They are lived and shared; Mondelez WTR embraces this by delivering tangible and shareable experiences that support consumers in expressing their identities, and in doing so, connect with others. 
