The Super Bowl is the most watched television spectacle in the United States. This year, a power failure interrupted the big game, sending 100 million+ viewers racing to social media to discuss what had happened.

Within minutes, Oreo tweeted a carefully crafted response. The brand’s audience was immediately engaged: 16,000 re-tweets, 18,000 Facebook Likes and 5,000 Facebook shares –all coming within the first hour.

In total, this tiny tweet received weeks worth of press and more than 525 million earned impressions (5X greater than the number of people tuning in to the game). All for zero media dollars.

Oreo is a 100-year-old brand that has used social to place itself at the center of the cultural dialogue. The solution – to re-imagine the biggest headlines from the Super Bowl in real time – is just one example of the brand’s broader strategy to use social media to reflect cultural milestones and events back on its audience.

The Oreo Blackout Tweet resonated with Oreo fans for two key reasons: 1) Because the real-time response was on-brand – these types of quick-witted responses have resonated with fans in the past – and 2) Because the moment was right for this particular type of content.

From a single tweet, Oreo saw huge impact. The "Dunk in the Dark" image was shared on Twitter and Facebook more than 20,000 times and garnered 525 million earned media impressions – 5X the number of people who tuned in to watch the game.

In fact, Oreo garnered 10,000 more mentions on Twitter than Joe Flacco, the quarterback for the winning team and Super Bowl MVP (Source: Topsy). Wired magazine declared Oreo as the Super Bowl winner, and Adweek ranked the tweet as one of the top five ‘ads’ of the night. All of this was achieved through zero media dollars.