Oreo Releases Alexa Skill for Mystery Flavor Challenge
Oreo has released a skill for the Amazon Alexa voice assistant for people who want to hear about announcements from the cookie brand and order some for delivery. The skill is part of the company’s promotion of its new Mystery Oreo flavor challenge.
Audio Cookie
The new Oreo skill is built into Alexa, and doesn’t need to be downloaded separately. Alexa will respond to the question “What’s new with OREO?” with news and information about the cookie brand, including special announcements. The skill is launched the same day as the new Mystery Oreo flavor contest. Alexa will offer clues about the mystery flavor if asked. The voice assistant is just one facet of a much bigger promotional campaign, with actors who play detectives like Gaten Matarazzo and Terry Crews making their own best guesses as to the flavor. People can submit one guess about the flavor per day on the contest website until Nov. 10 for the chance to win $50,000.
In addition to the news and contest, Alexa device owners can ask the voice assistant to order different kinds of Oreo packages. Alexa will add the Oreo order to the customer’s Amazon shopping cart and push a notification to the customer about the order. Telling the voice assistant to “checkout Oreos” will complete the order for delivery based on their Amazon settings.
Promotion and Voice Shopping
The benefits for Oreo of integrating into Alexa are easy to see. It can boost awareness and interest in its mystery flavor challenge and entice people to order its cookies with almost no effort. For Amazon, the Oreo skill is another step toward Alexa being the major hub for information and commerce.
Alexa and voice assistants in general want to build up their promotional and commercial content. Bacardi used Alexa and Google Assistant for a free rum sample campaign in May and last month Reebok offered free sneakers through a voice assistant campaign. Send Me a Sample has built an entire business model on offering perfume and other product samples via voice assistants.
Voice commerce is still a very young space, but 31 million Americans are expected to shop by voice this year according to a survey by eMarketer, a number that will likely only grow as more people bring smart speakers into their homes. Oreos are exactly the kind of item people might purchase by voice. Research by Voicebot and other groups continually points to groceries and other household items as what people want to buy by voice. Oreo is looking to ride that wave of positive sentiment and the increasing consumer reach of Alexa.
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