Cookie or creme? It's a question that's divided Oreo fans and households for decades, and it's at the center of a brilliant new ad campaign from the blue-boxed cookie maker. Released on the heels of the company's stellar Super Bowl campaign, the spot stars self-proclaimed "physicist" David Neevel — advertising creative and purported mastermind behind a complex machine that automatically removes divides and de-cremes any Oreo.
"Tools, wire, and wood."
His voice drenched in sarcasm, Neevel spends much of the four-minute ad discussing all the sacrifices and efforts he had to make during the ".04 years" it took him to build the contraption. Made with "tools, wire, and wood," the Rube Goldberg-like machine divides each cookie with a hatchet, before scraping the creme from each half with a CNC router table.
The video, which was developed with Wieden + Kennedy's Portland ad agency, is part of a broader social media campaign that invites consumers to upload Oreo photos to Instagram and proclaim their allegiance with hashtags — #cookiethis or #cremethat. It's a pretty blatant parody of today's YouTube-fueled DIY culture, but it's hard to find fault with Oreo's execution. Neevel's disdain for creme, on the other hand, is another story.