Oreo Thins Uses Incognito Mode To Stop Kids From Stealing

OK, that's it. The next time I buy a pack of Oreos I'm hiding them from the kids.

How many of us have uttered those words, or similar, when we discover an empty pack of our beloved Oreo cookies in the pantry? Come on, admit it. You've created elaborate schemes to protect your precious treat from the tiny fingers of thieving children. I've spent 40 years writing ads for brands that spend millions trying to manufacture this exact kind of relatable insight, and Oreo Thins' marketing team just got it handed to them by their own customers. Instead of booby-trapping their packages, they built the joke into the product: hide the cookies in plain sight.

The Brilliant Hide-In-Plain-Sight Solution

Oreo designed these co-branded packages through a strategic partnership with Ford, Hanes, Green Giant, and Better Homes & Gardens. The idea was simple, the execution… freaking brilliant. This is the kind of insight that doesn't come from a focus group deck — it comes from someone in a meeting actually listening to how real parents talk about their kids raiding the pantry.

Co-branded packaging, hidden in plain sight, so the kids wouldn't give them a second look. Imagine opening the freezer to find Green Giant's Cauliflower Medley. No kid in their right mind would touch that.

Oreo is releasing these limited edition wrapped packages into the wild to trick kids and keep their parental stash safe.

The four packages are designed to look like a pack of Hanes white t-shirts, a Ford owner's manual, some Green Giant frozen veggies, and of course, a cookbook, designed to sit in the plainest of plain sights.

How It All Came Together

According to Oreo brand manager Sydney Kranzmann, parents have been complaining about kids jacking their Oreo stash for ages. So, they decided to choose brand partners that targeted the same demographic as Oreo Thins — the millennial parent. That's the part most small businesses skip: they partner with whoever's convenient instead of whoever shares an actual customer.

Of course, Oreo made a bunch to give away for free (just look at all the PR they are getting for it, including this blog, duh!). They made 3,000 of these cleverly designed packages to hide in plain sight and are giving them away.

To get one, all you have to do is post your Oreo Thins hiding spots on Twitter or Instagram with the hashtag #THINSProtectionProgram. Oh yeah, if free Oreo Thins isn't enough incentive for you, everyone who shares their hiding spot will be entered in a contest to pick up $25,000! You can buy LOTS of Oreo Thins with that kind of dough. Notice what the hashtag campaign is doing on top of the giveaway: it's turning the packaging joke into free, user-generated proof that the idea landed. That's the whole campaign working twice — once as product design, once as a headline for a thousand social posts. If you want to see how much weight a headline like that is actually carrying, your headline is doing 80% of the work, whether it's on a jar of peanut butter or a tweet about hiding cookies from a six-year-old.

What This Means For Your Small Business

As a small business owner, you might be saying to yourself, "Yeah, but I am not Oreo. I don't get to co-brand with Ford or Green Giant."

You're right, you don't. But there are countless small business opportunities to co-brand or partner up with businesses all around you, and the mechanics are the same ones Oreo just used: find a partner whose customer is your customer, and build something that gets talked about instead of just distributed. For us, the marriage between Ad Zombies and No Limit Creatives is a no-brainer. For a pizza shop owner, it might be the ice cream shop a few doors down. If you own a clothing boutique, you could partner with a hairstylist, a shoe store, or a jewelry shop.

You need to think outside the box and look around at those businesses you'd love to partner with. Once you find them, the ask is easy: show up with a specific idea, not a vague "we should collab sometime." Oreo didn't call Ford and ask to "partner up" — they showed up with a wrapped package concept ready to go. Do that and you'll often be greeted with an enthusiastic YES!