Updated June 14, 2026. Originally published September 2012 — rewritten in full as the prequel piece to Oreo's Super Bowl tweet six months later.
Oreo Daily Twist was a 100-day content campaign that taught a consumer brand how to publish like a newsroom. Starting June 25, 2012, Oreo released one piece of news-reactive branded content every day for 100 consecutive days. By the end, the cookie brand had produced more shareable cultural content in three months than most CPG brands produce in three years — and had built the operating muscle that made the 2013 Super Bowl tweet possible. Daily Twist is the prequel. Dunk in the Dark is the closer. They belong to one campaign system.
For the full Oreo brand reference — founding, Mondelez ownership, NASCAR centennial, global formulations, and the flavor-collaboration economy — see Oreo: 100 Years of the Cookie That Trained the World to Twist, Lick, Dunk.
The Setup
Oreo turned 100 in March 2012. The marketing build started with a "History" print campaign, anchored by a Tony Stewart NASCAR partnership that put a custom Oreo paint scheme on the No. 33 Chevrolet at Daytona to open the Nationwide Series season. Brand awareness was not the problem. The problem was relevance — how to make a century-old cookie feel current to a 2012 audience that was increasingly consuming culture on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr in real time.
The answer was to publish like a magazine, not advertise like a brand. Daily Twist was a news desk inside a CPG company.
The Build
Three agencies operated the campaign in coordination. DraftFCB New York ran creative. 360i — then Oreo's digital agency, later the agency behind the Super Bowl tweet — ran the digital execution. Weber Shandwick ran the PR amplification. MediaVest ran the paid distribution. The integration is the part most brands missed about Daily Twist — four agency partners in one war room, with the brand client in the room, signing off on creative in hours instead of weeks.
Each morning the team identified the cultural moment Oreo would react to that day. Pride Month. The Mars Rover landing. Shark Week. The birth of a panda cub. Elvis Presley's birthday. The first day of school. The team produced original photography, retouching, copy, and final-asset delivery in the same day. Each piece of content was an actual photographed Oreo cookie, modified or staged to react to the news event.
"The vast majority of the work happens in real time. Each morning the team homes in on what's trending and what's right for Oreo," Megan Sheehan, creative director at DraftFCB, told Ad Age during the campaign. Sarah Hofstetter, then president of 360i, added: "The content performs at its best when the relevance and timeliness come together, so we're not too late to the meme."
The Numbers
Oreo recorded a 110% increase in fan interaction per social media post over the course of the campaign. Facebook impressions on Daily Twist content exceeded 230 million across the 100 days. Earned media value — coverage in Ad Age, AdWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and dozens of trade and consumer outlets — ran into the tens of millions of dollars at standard ad-equivalent rates.
The most important number was internal. The brand and its agencies produced 100 pieces of original creative in 100 days without missing a beat. That cadence is what most consumer brands could not match in 2012 and still cannot match in 2026.
Why It Worked
Three structural decisions made Daily Twist work, and each one is still the playbook a decade later.
Brand consistency. Every piece of content reduced to the same visual primitive — an Oreo cookie staged to react to the day's news. The constraint was the strength. A consumer scrolling Facebook in 2012 recognized the format on sight, which compounded the brand recognition across the 100-day run.
Decision speed. The brand client was in the room. Approvals that would normally route through legal, brand, and senior marketing in a 10-day cycle ran in 60 minutes. Daily Twist proved that the cost of agility is not creative quality — it is decision authority.
Cultural participation, not cultural broadcast. Daily Twist did not push Oreo into the news cycle. It pulled Oreo into the conversation already happening. The cookie became a recurring participant, not a sponsor, in 100 daily cultural moments.
What Daily Twist Built
Six months after Daily Twist ended, the Super Bowl XLVII power outage happened on February 3, 2013. Oreo and 360i had the war room, the decision authority, the brand-consistent visual primitive, and the creative cadence already built. The "You can still dunk in the dark" tweet was not a moment of inspiration. It was the natural output of a system that had spent 100 days rehearsing for it.
For the full breakdown of that 15-minute window and what it taught every consumer brand that came after, see Dunk in the Dark: The 15 Minutes That Invented Real-Time Marketing.
Daily Twist is also one of the canonical case studies in earned-first brand-building, alongside campaigns covered in Viral Content: The Oreo Operating Model for Earned Distribution. For the platform-level context — Twitter as the surface that made real-time marketing possible — see The Brand on Twitter: From Cybersquatting to Citation Share. 5W AI Communications is the AI Communications Firm built to operate this kind of multi-agency, real-time brand system today, across earned, paid, social, and the AI engine surface.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long did Oreo Daily Twist run?
100 consecutive days, from June 25, 2012 through October 2, 2012.
Which agencies produced Daily Twist?
DraftFCB New York led creative. 360i ran digital execution. Weber Shandwick ran public relations. MediaVest ran paid distribution.
What were the campaign's results?
A 110% lift in fan interaction per social-media post and more than 230 million Facebook impressions across the 100-day run, with earned-media coverage across major advertising and consumer-marketing trade outlets.
How is Daily Twist connected to the Super Bowl Dunk in the Dark tweet?
The same war-room model and the same agency partner (360i) ran both campaigns. Daily Twist built the decision-speed muscle and brand-consistent visual primitive that made the Super Bowl tweet executable in 15 minutes.
