skills/campaign-canon/references/legendary-campaigns/cards/oreo-dunk-in-the-dark-2013.md

---
id: oreo-dunk-in-the-dark-2013
title: "Dunk in the Dark"
brand: Oreo
agency: 360i
year: 2013
country: US
region: north_america
industry: cpg
pattern: [P05, P09]
category: social
idea_type: execution
involvement: participation
channel: digital
duration: moment
goal: [awareness, engagement, advocacy]
budget: low
emotion: [ironic_sincerity, belonging]
emotion_tier: 3
insight_domain: community
media_epoch: social
awards: [multiple]
quality_score: 8
scalability: unique
risk: safe
confidence: high
quality: canonical
source_url: https://digiday.com/marketing/oral-history-oreo-tweet/
---

# Dunk in the Dark (Oreo · 2013)

## Insight
Real-time cultural relevance is structurally impossible for most brands because approvals, legal, and production timelines are incompatible with the speed of live events. The insight: if you build the infrastructure and permissions structure before the event, you can move as fast as the internet.

## Mechanic
During Super Bowl XLVII's 34-minute power outage on February 3, 2013, Oreo's social team posted a single image to Twitter: a partially lit Oreo cookie with the copy "You can still dunk in the dark." The tweet went up within minutes of the blackout starting. By morning it had 15,000 retweets and international media coverage. Total cost: essentially zero.

## Why it worked
P05 (cultural hijack): the blackout was the cultural moment; Oreo borrowed the attention of 108 million people watching the Super Bowl, adding something rather than merely referencing. P09 (user as co-author): the tweet was designed to be retweeted — its concision, wit, and relevance gave people a reason to share it as their own cultural observation. The real innovation was organizational: a pre-approved real-time team with the authority to publish without a 48-hour approval chain.

## Steal
Build the capability before you need it. A war room is not a creative strategy — it is an organizational strategy. The creative idea (dunking in the dark) is simple. The hard work was convincing an organization to trust a small team to publish live, unsupervised, during the most watched television event of the year.

## Related
- Pattern: [[../MOC-pattern.md#p05]]
- Sibling: [[kfc-fck-2018.md|FCK]]
- Sibling: [[addictaide-like-my-addiction-2017.md|Like My Addiction]]
- Emotion match: [[absolut-absolut-campaign-1981.md|Absolut _____]]

---

*Author: Serge Shima ([t.me/aimastersme](https://t.me/aimastersme) · [sergeshima.com](https://sergeshima.com) · [aimasters.me](https://aimasters.me)) · License: CC BY 4.0 — attribution required · Source: [smixs/creative-director-skill](https://github.com/smixs/creative-director-skill)*