Since 2013, NBC, has been producing live TV musicals as a new holiday tradition to bring families together. Their musical for 2016, “Hairspray Live!”, perfectly fit into our nostalgia theme. This TV musical was based on a 2007 movie musical. That movie musical was based on a 2002 Broadway show that in turn, was based on a 1988 movie, set in 1962. This vast history helped to cross the generational divide of our audience.

The idea was simple, a “Hairspray Live!” character would dunk an OREO cookie live on camera, seamlessly embedding the OREO brand into the three-hour special TV event.

We scripted a short piece of content that called back to the live ads of the 1960s— to keep with the feel of the musical. This content integrated our core brand ritual with well-known talent, while pioneering a first—a live ad in a TV musical.

In “Hairspray Live!”, the main characters appear on a local TV program, “The Corny Collins Show,” which we used as a backdrop for live ad. Celebrity dancer Derek Hough, as host Corny Collins, took a break from the “program” and, turning to camera, dunked and ate an OREO cookie. This kept the execution organic to the world of “Hairspray Live!”

In addition, we negotiated the live commercial to run in the online stream of “Hairspray Live!”, as well as incorporating the NBC Social Sync platform to stream the OREO “Hairspray Live!” commercial on Facebook.

Derek Hough posted on Facebook about his OREO experience with the live ad also being replayed as a bonus unit on Instagram. OREO sponsored the Snapchat “Hairspray Live!” story, owning 100% share of voice. This helped expand our reach and target a younger audience who might not have been watching TV.

There was a high degree of audience engagement as well as favorable lift for the brand in engagement, recall, and purchase intent.

• #1 in brand recall among all broadcast custom content executions of the year (Nielsen Brand Effect)

• 48% lift in purchase intent

• 98% audience retention (Nielsen 18-54 L3)

• 4x more effective than typical OREO ads in both likability and brand recall

• 5x more tweets about OREO on the night it aired.

• Audience was 2x as likely to talk about the brand with family and friends, visit the Oreo website, and follow Oreo on Twitter

The OREO takeover of “Hairspray Live!” delivered 744 MM impressions over 24 hours.

• Social media impressions: 3,340,000 in one week

• Video impressions: 6,441,409 (amongst W18-49) in one month

Together with “Hairspray Live!”, OREO reminded all ages of the “wonderfilled” world of dunking.