Posted on 05/02/2008 5:32:06 AM PDT by billorites
Unlike its iconic American counterpart, the Oreo sold in China is frequently long, thin, four-layered and coated in chocolate. But both kinds of cookies have one important thing in common: They are now best sellers.
The Oreo has long been the top-selling cookie in the U.S. market. But Kraft Foods had to reinvent the Oreo to make it sell well in the world's most populous nation. While Chinese Oreo sales represent a tiny fraction of Kraft's $37.2 billion in annual revenue, the cookie's journey in China exemplifies the kind of entrepreneurial transformation that CEO Irene Rosenfeld is trying to spread throughout the food giant.
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Three hundred of the applicants were trained to become Oreo brand ambassadors. Some of the students rode around Beijing on bicycles outfitted with wheel covers resembling Oreos and handed out cookies to more than 300,000 consumers. Others held Oreo-themed basketball games to reinforce the idea of dunking cookies in milk. Television commercials showed kids twisting apart Oreo cookies, licking the cream center and dipping the cookie halves into glasses of milk.
Rosenfeld calls the bicycle campaign "a stroke of genius that only could have come from local managers. The more opportunity our local managers have to deal with local conditions will be a source of competitive advantage for us."
So in China in 2006 Kraft remade the Oreo itself, introducing for the first time an Oreo that looked almost nothing like the original. The new Chinese Oreo consisted of four layers of crispy wafer filled with vanilla and chocolate cream, coated in chocolate. Kraft developed a proprietary handling process to ensure that the chocolate product could be shipped across the country, withstanding the cold climate in the north and the hot, humid weather in the south, yet still be ready to melt in the mouth.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Hope they put lead in it.
“Now with yummy lead and essential anti-freeze.”
I’m glad I wasn’t drinking or eating anything when I read your post. LOL!
This should be a Chinese wake-up call for Hydrox.
So it doesn’t look, feel or taste like an Oreo, but they still call it an Oreo? Why not give it a different name rather than b*sta*dize a classic American cookie? And what’s the problem with ROUND, the f’n Chinese don’t like Round cookies?
Is this like the way the “Chinese food” that I love so well at my local buffett bears absolutely no resemblence to the Chinese food in China?
Four layers and coated with chocolate?
When will they start producing these in the U. S. I’m a cookie monster.
You know what they call an Oreo cookie in China?
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