New York
CNN
—
Selena Gomez isn’t a stranger to collaborations on her music, but her latest partner is a bit different: Oreo.
The singer, actress, investor and now, cookie maker, created a first-ever flavor for Oreo as part of the cookie company’s growing roster of partnerships to help attract Gen Z eaters and keep the 113-year-old brand in the cultural zeitgeist.
Gomez was inspired by her love of horchata — a cold, sweetened drink often made from ground rice or nuts and flavored with cinnamon — for her cookie.
Her custom-made Oreo has a layer of chocolate and cinnamon creme that’s mixed with sweetened condensed milk and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. The filling is then sandwiched between two chocolate-cinnamon flavored wafers, resulting in a sweet-and-spiced flavor combo.
The wafers are engraved with six different embossments, including one that says “Selenators,” a nod to the name of Gomez’s fans, as well as her signature, which marks the first time Oreo has ever put an autograph on its cookie.
“Making my own Oreo cookie was a lot of fun,” Gomez said in a press release Tuesday. “I grew up loving them, so being able to be a part of the process was a full-circle moment.”
The limited-edition cookies go on sale June 2 online in the United States before rolling out to major retailers nationwide a week later. The cookies will be released in other countries, including Canada, Brazil, Australia and New Zealand, in the following weeks.
Gomez was the “perfect partner” for Oreo’s newest collaboration according to Michelle Deignan, vice president of Oreo US, because of her massive reach on social media (Gomez has 420 million Instagram followers) and her global appeal.
The 32-year-old is one of the youngest self-made billionaires, according to Bloomberg, which valued Gomez’s net worth at $1.3 billion. A “vast bulk” of her wealth is tied to the creation of Rare Beauty, her makeup line that has been a smashing success with influencers and teens, the publication revealed last year.
Developing the cookie flavor took about 18 months, Deignan said, with Gomez and Oreo going through multiple iterations and discussing what resonates with her before they settled on its final version.
“When she landed on the chocolate and cinnamon cream, she just felt like it was the perfect articulation for her,” she told CNN.
Oreo first found success with a Lady Gaga collaboration and, most recently, a partnership with singer Post Malone.
Malone’s flavor, which had Oreo’s first-ever swirled creme filling, brought in new customers and helped grow it’s awareness among Gen Z, Deignan said. Oreo stuck with a musician for its latest collaboration because music is the number one “passion point” for that demographic.
Plus, the partnerships helped the Mondelēz-owned brand grow to more than $4 billion in sales last year.
“It’s become even more important as consumers’ purse strings tighten and they don’t have a lot of disposable income to spend,” Deignan said. “What we’ve seen is bringing credible partnership, like Selena, makes it worth it for consumers to part with their hard-earned cash.”
