The 34-minute Super Bowl power outage caused a Twitter uproar, but while many fans used social media to make jokes, Oreo seized the opportunity to launch a viral marketing campaign. Oreo’s 15-person Super Bowl social media team reacted quickly to the blackout, tweeting an ad that read “Power Out? No problem.” The Tweet was accompanied by the image of a single Oreo in a half-blacked out setting with the caption, “You can still dunk in the dark.”

Oreo’s quick reaction earned the company about 15,000 retweets and 20,000 Facebook likes. The company’s 15-member social media team had been assigned to react to any big moment in the game. The team included copywriters, artists and a strategist.

“The new world order of communications today incorporates the whole of the way people are interacting with brands right now,” said digital marketing agency strategist Sarah Hofstetter, whose company 360i handled game-day tweeting for Oreo. “Once the blackout happened, no one was distracted — there was nothing going on. The combination of speed and cultural relevance propelled it [to] the forefront.”

Oreo also had different advertisements prepared based on who won the Super Bowl. While other companies spent nearly $4 million per television advertisement (Oreo also ran one in the first quarter), Oreo creatively used real-time data and social media to advertise. This allows more customization than traditional television spots.

Surveys indicated about 36 percent of people planned to utilize second screens during the Super Bowl, so using social media as an advertising tool could capture these viewers. This is especially true during an unexpected event like the blackout, as people no longer had a football game to watch.

“I think a retweet is much more engaged, it is suggesting that the audience is not only processing this message but actively engaging with the message and selecting the message to pass on to their friends,”  Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger explained in an interview with Wired. “That said, is this going to sell more Oreos at the end of the day? Hard to tell. [But] It definitely makes the brand seem like a more clever, more interesting, sharp brand. So in terms of brand equity this is as effective, if not more effective, than just showing another Super Bowl ad.”