Hi there,

I finally got my fat boy mitts on the new Oreo × Reese's collaboration and immediately got transported back to primary school. My mates and I had fierce debates about the "correct" way to eat an Oreo. Twist and lick the cream first? Dunk the whole thing in milk? Bite straight through like a savage? Or even the ultimate, smashing it into Sara Lee Vanilla Ice Cream.

Also sitting on the Mount Rushmore of chocolates is Reese's. But lived in completely different territory. You pull that out and that meant business. Not your Monday to Friday chocolate but your special occasion. That perfect sweet-salty moment that disappeared too quickly, leaving you rifling through orange wrappers hoping you'd missed one.

Both brands carved out permanent space in our heads through sacred rituals and childhood memories. And for over a century, they were perfectly content ruling their separate kingdoms.

Then July 30 happened, and they torched the entire branding rulebook.

The Partnership That Shouldn't Exist

When Oreo and Reese's announced their team-up, it felt like watching your divorced parents get back together. Wait, this is allowed? These aren't friendly neighbors—they're direct competitors who've spent decades fighting over the same checkout lane real estate.

But here we are, with two products hitting the shelves this month nationwide that sound like they were designed by stoned college kids with unlimited R&D budgets:

• Oreo Reese's Cookie: Your classic Oreo, but now the cream is peanut butter mixed with cookie crumbs.

• Reese's Oreo Cup: A peanut butter cup layered with white crème and packed with Oreo pieces.

Which is corporate speak for "we're about to print money and you're going to love us for it."

The kicker? Unlike most limited-edition stunts designed to create artificial scarcity, the Oreo version graduates to permanent status in January 2026. This isn't a cute summer fling, they're moving in together.

The "Holy Shit" Moment Nobody's Talking About

Here's what makes this collaboration genius, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia.

When you buy an Oreo, there's a tiny voice in your head that whispers "you probably shouldn't." Same with Reese's. That's two separate guilt transactions.

But when you buy both together in one product? Your brain reads it completely differently. It's not double indulgence, it's balanced indulgence. Like how credit card rewards programs make spending money feel like earning points. Two "bad" choices somehow create one "justified" choice.

It's moral licensing disguised as a brand partnership, and it's awesome.

To dive in a little deeper. Moral licensing works because our brains constantly try to maintain a positive self-image. When we do something we see as "bad," we need psychological permission to feel okay about it. Combining two indulgences creates what psychologists call "virtue balancing"—the brain interprets the combination as more balanced than either choice alone.

There's also the "licensing effect" at play. When we see two recognizable brands together, we assume someone (the brands, regulators, nutritionists) has already done the moral math for us. The partnership itself becomes our permission structure.

This changes everything about product mashups. It's not about combining things people love, it's about combining things people feel guilty loving into something they can enjoy without the psychological cost.

@unapologeticallyjae

Reese’s and Oreo Collab #food #fypシ #walmart #oreo #reeses @Walmart @Reeses @OREO

The Death of Brand Warfare

For decades, the game was about beating whoever sat next to you on the shelf. Now the smartest brands know better: the real wins come when you stop fighting and start colliding.

McDonald’s and Travis Scott didn’t sell a burger. They sold a cultural moment, with lines that looked more like a concert than a drive-thru. Supreme and Louis Vuitton blurred streetwear and luxury and unlocked a billion-dollar resale market.

But the weirder pairings are where the shift really shows. Taco Bell and Beyond Meat had nothing in common until they made plant-based tacos feel obvious. Peloton and Adidas fused hardware with apparel, proving each side could stretch its category. Heinz and Absolut even teamed up to make vodka pasta sauce — a mashup no one saw coming.

None of these partnerships make sense on paper. But they all make sense in culture.

Gen Z doesn’t want loyalty; they want novelty. Snack brands, fashion houses, fast food giants — all scrambling to stay relevant in a world where attention is rented by the second. Cocoa prices are soaring, ad costs keep climbing, and margins are under pressure everywhere.

So the enemies aren’t each other anymore. The fight is against irrelevance. That’s why KitKat works with Ben & Jerry’s one month and matcha brands the next. Why M&M’s shows up with NASA or Target. Why Crocs turns fried chicken into footwear with KFC.

Because when the real threats get this big, competing with each other starts to look like a waste of time.

The Sweet Formula That Actually Works

When brands like Oreo and Reese's collide successfully, they follow what I call the Sweet Formula: nostalgia, novelty, and psychological permission.

1) Nostalgia: Few brands are as embedded in childhood rituals as Oreo and Reese's. Dan Mohnshine revealed that over 268 million views of user-generated Oreo × Reese's content existed before these products were even announced. The hunger was already there.

2) Novelty: This is the generation that turned Pokemon × McDonald's cards into a black market commodity. They don't just want products—they want collectible moments engineered for TikTok unboxings and Instagram stories.

3: Psychological permission: Gen Z processes identity completely differently than previous generations. Boomers used brand loyalty as identity markers—you were a Ford family or a Chevy family. Gen X developed brand skepticism. Millennials wanted brand alignment with personal values.

Gen Z wants brand fluidity that matches their situational identity. They're not looking for brands to define them—they want brands that adapt to different versions of themselves. Oreo × Reese's works because it mirrors this psychology. Instead of asking you to choose, it gives you permission to be both.

Why Most Collaborations Fail (And Why This One Won't)

With 60-65% of brand partnerships failing, most collaborations are designed by committees who treat consumers like spreadsheets. They obsess over product features instead of earning emotional permission.

The pattern becomes obvious when you examine the disasters:

McDonald’s x Moschino is a perfect example. On paper, it was a playful clash of worlds: fast food meets high fashion. But in reality? The audiences didn’t overlap. McDonald’s customers balked at runway-level prices for something wrapped in golden arches, while Moschino’s fashion crowd wasn’t about to embrace a brand built on cheap burgers..

Spotify and Starbucks quietly died after 18 months because customers didn't want another playlist to manage—they wanted expertly curated music while they grabbed coffee and moved on with their day.

But then Crocs and Balenciaga created an $850 rubber clog that sold out instantly. Why? The partnership gave fashion people permission to prioritize comfort and comfort people permission to make a fashion statement.

Successful collaborations solve psychological problems, not just business problems. Oreo × Reese's works because it eliminates indulgence guilt while creating that "finally, someone made this" cultural moment.

What This Really Means

Oreo and Reese's just did something most executives would never consider: they made friends with the competition.

We've been taught that business is warfare. Protect your territory. Crush your rivals. Win at all costs. That worked when markets were growing and consumers picked sides and stayed there.

But what happens when everyone's territory is shrinking?

McDonald's and Burger King keep acting like mortal enemies while DoorDash quietly steals both their customers. Ford and GM burn energy fighting each other while Tesla runs circles around them. At some point, you have to wonder: what if your biggest threat isn't the brand sitting next to you on the shelf?

Smart companies are starting to figure this out. Their real competition isn't each other—it's irrelevance. Gen Z doesn't care about corporate rivalries that started before they were born. They just want products that make sense for their lives.

Fighting over a shrinking pie makes less sense than building a bigger one together. Oreo and Reese's figured that out faster than most.

The Question That Changes Everything

The Sweet Formula isn't just about cookies and candy. It's a blueprint for understanding how modern consumers actually think.

Nostalgia + novelty + psychological permission explains why some collaborations become cultural moments while others become cautionary tales. More importantly, it reveals something fundamental: today's consumers don't want to choose sides—they want permission to be multifaceted.

This insight applies far beyond brand partnerships. Product development, marketing campaigns, even how you think about customer loyalty—it all changes when you stop forcing people into boxes and start giving them permission to be both.

Stop asking "How do we beat our competition?" Start asking "How do we solve the problem our competition can't solve alone?"

That's the question that changes industries.

Brand Wars: The Battle of the Deliveries

DoorDash

Started in 2013 by focusing on the markets everyone else wrote off - suburbs, college towns, and smaller cities where competition was nonexistent. While competitors fought over Manhattan and San Francisco, DoorDash quietly built relationships with local diners, pizza joints, and family restaurants that actually needed delivery partners.

Their strategy was methodical: enter a market, sign up every restaurant, optimize delivery routes, then move to the next town. They invested heavily in logistics technology and driver satisfaction, betting that boring reliability would beat flashy marketing. Their recent commercials show real families getting Tuesday night dinner delivered - no celebrities, no hype, just "your neighborhood, delivered." DoorDash positioned themselves as the utility that works everywhere, from downtown Minneapolis to rural Ohio.

Uber Eats

Launched in 2014 leveraging Uber's existing driver network and premium brand recognition in major metropolitan areas. Their bet was simple: people who trust Uber for rides will trust Uber for food. They targeted upscale restaurants and trendy food scenes, pouring money into celebrity partnerships (Mark Hamill's "Tonight, I'll be eating" Super Bowl spot), aggressive promotions, and sleek app design that mirrored the Uber ride experience.

Uber Eats focused on speed and convenience for tech-savvy urban customers who valued brand prestige alongside their pad thai. They assumed brand transfer would be automatic - that Uber's reputation for premium service would translate seamlessly into food delivery dominance in major cities.

Ad Vault: M&Ms

Fainting Santa (1996)

M&M's accidentally created the most valuable advertising IP of the 90s. What started as a Christmas commercial became a character franchise worth billions in media value.

The breakthrough wasn't the creative execution—it was realizing they'd built something competitors couldn't copy. Snickers could hire celebrities. Kit Kat could license music. But only M&M's owned Red and Yellow.

Those characters became economic engines. No talent fees, no licensing costs, no scheduling conflicts. Just pure brand equity that could appear in any campaign, partner with any brand, or generate content across any platform. They turned advertising from an expense into an asset.

The math is simple: create characters once, use them for decades. Red and Yellow have probably appeared in hundreds of campaigns since 1996, each building on the equity of the last. Meanwhile, competitors keep paying new celebrities for one-off spots that create no lasting brand assets.

The lesson: sometimes the most valuable thing you create isn't the campaign—it's what you can build with it afterward.

Lento Vibes

A bit of random inspo from around the grounds:

• Jimmy Kimmel Gets Suspended: ABC pulls Jimmy Kimmel Live! following his comments on Charlie Kirk’s death, sparking debate over free speech and political pressure on broadcasters. 👉 Read more

• AI Gets Human: Claude’s Brand Moment
  Anthropic rolls out “Keep thinking”, its first major brand campaign, positioning Claude as your thinking partner—not a brain replacement.👉 Read more 

• Nike + Skims Hit the Gym Floor NikeSkims’ “Bodies at Work” campaign spotlights elite female athletes in a new activewear collab—performance meets sculpted style. 👉 See the launch

• The Guardian Goes Stateside: The Guardian launches its first U.S. campaign—scaling its UK legacy to international impact, with journalism at its core. 👉 Check the campaign

• Ben Stiller Sips Subversion: Ben Stiller debuts a soda brand that mocks celeb culture—deadpan jokes, ironic branding, zero fluff. 👉 Sip the satire

• IKEA’s Sleep Talk Wins Hearts: IKEA leans vulnerability with “Sleep Talk Reviews”, turning honest whispers into a campaign about comfort, humanity, and real connection. 👉 Hear the reviews