Oreo Returns to Holiday Advertising After a Five-Year Gap

By Rebecca Stone

Oreo’s first holiday campaign in five years is a 30-second spot built around Santa and a cookie-stealing father.

The brand generates around $3 billion in global revenue and anchors Mondelēz’s biscuits and baked snacks segment. That scale gives the seasonal return more weight than a routine ad-cycle change, although the launch details offer no sales forecast or performance target for the campaign.

The 30-second spot gives Oreo a holiday role centered on the product rather than a broad seasonal message.

How does the film turn a holiday ritual into a brand gag?

The disclosed narrative compresses a familiar holiday ritual, one act of cookie theft and one comic reversal into a structure that can move quickly across a 30-second runtime.

The sequence is straightforward:

• An Oreo is left for Santa Claus.
• A father sneaks a bite of the cookie meant for Santa.
• Santa retaliates, and the cookie-stealing parent lands on the naughty list.

The available details do not specify the retaliation or the setting. Nor do they identify the cast beyond the father and Santa, the distribution channels, the launch date or the budget.

The mechanism is easy to follow. Oreo takes one established ritual, breaks it through a small act of theft and restores order through Santa’s judgment. The product stays central because the rule depends on who gets to eat the Oreo.

The title, “Santa’s Favorite Cookie,” also makes Oreo part of the premise before the plot starts. A product-specific conflict gives the audience a clearer reason to remember which brand owns the joke. Here, Santa’s favorite cookie triggers the whole scenario.

Who made the campaign?

No Notes Productions developed the spot. The agency was founded by Colin Jost, whom the launch details identify as a comedian, Saturday Night Live writer and longtime Weekend Update co-anchor.

Jost’s comedy background supplies useful context for readers assessing the project’s tone. The launch details do not say whether he appears on screen or helped write the film. The named agency gives Oreo a production partner with a visible comedy pedigree.

For marketing leaders, the useful distinction is between agency credit and campaign scope. The disclosure names No Notes as the developer. It does not identify media planning, distribution or performance reporting partners.

The assignment brings a brand with around $3 billion in global revenue to No Notes. The launch provides no budget, audience forecast or sales impact. The visible evidence is the film and its concept, not measured response.

What does this change for brand marketers?

It changes the competitive setup, not proven demand: Oreo has re-entered holiday advertising after five years with one tightly defined seasonal story.

Five years makes the move a re-entry rather than another annual activation. The spot also gives Mondelēz a seasonal platform around a product that anchors its biscuits and baked snacks segment.

Marketers can read the mechanism as brand-first storytelling. The ad does not use cookies as a small prop in a broad winter montage; eating an Oreo creates the conflict, Santa delivers the consequence and Oreo remains central to the stated plot.

The available material does not include a media budget, channel mix, impressions, sales target or sales lift. It therefore supports a judgment about creative approach, but not a claim that the campaign will move revenue.

Nor should the $3 billion revenue figure be treated as a campaign forecast. The figure describes Oreo’s overall global revenue, and the disclosed information does not state its reporting period.

For a marketing chief, the practical watchpoint is simple: does the seasonal device earn enough attention to reinforce Oreo’s ownership of the holiday cookie occasion? The launch delivers that test, not an answer to it.

Why does the business context matter?

At around $3 billion in global revenue, Oreo carries enough scale for this to sit inside a core Mondelēz business rather than a marginal seasonal effort. The cookie brand anchors the company’s biscuits and baked snacks segment, which makes the five-year return a portfolio-level marketing decision.

The disclosed setup, theft and retaliation can fit inside 30 seconds. The short format leaves no room for a separate product explanation or a long brand manifesto. Oreo must carry identification through the premise itself.

That is where the campaign title does useful work. “Santa’s Favorite Cookie” tells the audience what the holiday object is before the father tests Santa’s rules. The familiar character supplies the authority, and Oreo supplies the disputed prize.

The reported revenue sets the scale of the brand at stake. It does not tell readers how many people will see the film, how the campaign will perform or what Oreo will sell during the holiday period.

Nothing in the disclosed details supports a return-on-ad-spend estimate. Any precise forecast would require a budget, placement plan and commercial baseline that have not been provided.

Those details also separate the launch from the result. The ad proves that Oreo has a new seasonal idea; it does not prove that the idea will create incremental demand.