Has “Mission Defeat Bowser” made Super Mario fans hungrier for Oreo?

Consideration score for Oreo cookies has risen markedly among Super Mario gamers amid a collaborative campaign between the two brands. Data from YouGov BrandIndex shows that the share of Super Mario gamers who would consider buying Oreos has risen from 46.2% on June 26 to 54.6% almost a month later.

Super Mario gamers in this piece refers to those who would consider playing Super Mario. The scores are based on an eight-week moving average in order to ensure a robust sample size.

The joint campaign asks consumers to defeat Bowser and save the kingdom. The promotion is chiefly centred around customised Oreo cookies with Super Mario characters embossed on them, which consumers must collect to win the mission.

During the same period, Consideration scores have inched up among the overall American population too – from 35% on June 26 to 37.5% as of July 24.

Benefits from the campaign may have been mutual as scores for Super Mario on key YouGov BrandIndex metrices have also risen among Oreo consumers during the same period.

For example, Impression scores for the Super Mario Bros. franchise have risen from 46.5 to 52.4. Simultaneously, there has been a rise in the share of Oreo consumers looking to play games from the franchise too. Consideration scores have risen to an average of 37.3% during the campaign period compared to 29.8% in the period immediately preceding it.

This perhaps is illustrative of the symbiotic benefits that are to be had when two mass market brands come together in a well put-together campaign targeting the right audience. Super Mario (2nd out of 59 video game franchises tracked) and Oreo (6th out of 114 CPG brands tracked) are among the leading brands in their respective spaces – video games and CPG foods – based on one-year average Current Customer scores on YouGov BrandIndex.

There is also a significant overlap between the potential customers of both brands – Oreo customers are markedly more likely than the average American to consider playing Super Mario Bros. (39% vs 30%) and Super Mario Bros. players are similarly more likely to consider buying Oreos (53% vs 38%). A collaboration such as this can potentially help activate and amplify this latent demand for both brands.

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