Dive Brief:

• Oreo released a miniature turntable for the holidays that swaps out the usual vinyl records to instead spin the Mondelez brand's cookies, according to news shared with Marketing Dive.
• The music box-sized offering plays four pre-recorded tunes once a mock record needle is placed over the user's Oreo cookie of choice, and skips a song each time a bite is taken from the snack. Users can also hit a microphone button while the cookie is spinning to record a custom message up to 30 seconds long, per instructions shared with Marketing Dive. Recorded messages can be erased for repeat use.
• Oreo is selling the limited-edition novelty gift, packaged in a tin with a selection of cookies, including the seasonal Oreo White Fudge variant, on Amazon for $20.

Dive Insight:

Oreo continues to try to innovate with its marketing around the holidays, positioning the turntable as an interactive bit of fun that could serve as a stocking stuffer or an option for office gift swaps. The brand's seasonal efforts in recent years have focused more on e-commerce as part of parent company Mondelez's broader attempts to ramp up a focus on the channel.

In the winter of 2016, Oreo launched a direct-to-consumer gift shop online. Neil Ackerman, who was Oreo's global director of e-commerce at the time, said the effort aimed to position the marketer as an e-commerce leader in the snack category, helping it to pilot a more agile supply chain and foster direct interaction with customers during a crucial sales period.

The choice to sell the turntable on Amazon rather than a proprietary site signals that Oreo potentially wants to reach a broader audience this year. Amazon has done a solid job of courting more marketers in the CPG and food spaces, in part because it can link more closely to the point of sale than other platforms and also because it shares some conversion and transactional data with its partners. Oreo could potentially tap into that to inform its future e-commerce efforts beyond the holiday effort.

Amazon's advertising business has quickly accelerated this year, becoming its fastest-growing business category, and appears to be stealing more market share from heavy hitters like Google. CNBC reported in October that some marketers are shifting up to 50% or 60% of their search budgets from Google toward Amazon, with most of that change occurring in low-cost, low-consideration, repeat purchase sectors like CPG. Other companies, including Procter & Gamble, have launched new products as Amazon exclusives.

Beyond the turntable, Oreo has recently dabbled in packaging innovation. It sold cookie packs specifically tailored for left-handed consumers as part of a promotion around International Lefthanders Day in August.