Kraft celebrated the 100th birthday of its Oreo biscuit in Shanghai yesterday by turning the waterfront into a vast Oreo advertisement, painting the landmark Oriental Pearl Tower Oreo blue, plastering skyscrapers with multi-storey neon Oreo adverts and staging fireworks over the Huangpu river.

Kraft：卡夫，美国最大的食品和饮料企业

Oriental Pearl Tower：东方明珠

skyscraper：摩天楼

It was a celebration of one of history’s most successful global brands – and of how that brand has reinvented itself in China, where Oreo is the mainland’s best-selling biscuit.

The way Kraft has transformed this most quintessentially American cookie is a model for how successful multinational brands are approaching the China market, retail analysts say.

quintessentially： 典型地；标准地

For what passes for an Oreo in China these days often bears only a glancing resemblance to the black and white sandwich biscuit first sold in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1912.

Since then, Kraft has sold 452bn Oreos, global revenues for the brand last year topped $2bn and the cookie has a Facebook community of 23m.

But in a bid to please Chinese taste buds, Kraft has made an Oreo with Chinese characteristics.

in a bid to：为了…

taste buds：味蕾

Some changes are subtle. The original Oreo is less sweet on the Chinese mainland than in the US. Other changes are nothing short of revolutionary, at least for Oreo aficionados.

nothing short of：简直就是；无异于…；简直不比…差

Oreo, introduced into China in 1996, largely languished until Kraft made changes in distribution and advertising to boost sales – and created new flavours and tastes suited to the local market.

Yum! Brands’ KFC has become the market leader in fast food in China by selling foods such as rice gruel with preserved, or “thousand-year-old” egg along with their chicken buckets. Coca-Cola developed its popular Minute Maid “Pulpy” juice drink first to appeal to Chinese tastes, but it has since gone on to become a $1bn global brand.

Minute Maid：美汁源（可口可乐公司旗下饮料品牌）

Starbucks and Häagen-Dazs have reinvented their entire business model in China, retail analysts say, eschewing the takeaway or home consumption model they use in the west to become dine-in venues in China.

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