For years Cheetos had spent its marketing efforts portraying itself as the “family fun” brand and downplaying the most distinctive—and divisive—aspect of the product: the orange, messy, indulgent dust.

This case illustrates the power of embracing and amplifying what makes a snack brand distinct in its category, even if it’s a polarizing attribute. By imbuing Cheetos dust with new meaning, our campaign not only doubled sales goals but also brought a wave of new households into the Cheetos franchise. The brand’s weakness ultimately became its superpower.

By 2019, Cheetos had seemingly reached its growth limit. Household penetration had plateaued, and the brand was losing share in the salty-snack category.

To attract new households into the Cheetos franchise, the brand planned to launch a new product innovation—Cheetos Popcorn.

However, the popcorn subcategory overwhelmingly touts “simple,” “healthy” and “wholesome” as attractive benefits. The big players of SkinnyPop and BOOMCHICKAPOP pride themselves on being easy “on the go” snacks. Popcorn is marketed as the snacking choice for those looking for a “better for you” option.

Cheetos had a tough task. The eating experience is messy, sticky and overwhelmingly orange, and it’s unlikely you’ll be doing anything else or be “on the go” while eating it.

Our brief? Break into a snack subcategory that stands for everything Cheetos doesn’t, surpassing sales goals and bringing new households into the Cheetos franchise.

Cheetos is a brand that’s all about mischief, encouraging messy breaks from the monotony of everyday life.

But the brand’s communications had been focused for years on winning over Millennial parents with “family fun” messaging, watering down the mischievous core of the brand in order to be more palatable to this audience.

While initially fruitful, this family strategy eventually pigeonholed Cheetos into the family-snack realm. Brand research found that the “family fun” occasion was relevant to only half of Cheetos buyers, leaving a massive amount of potential untapped. Which is why the brand started to experience sales and growth plateaus.

To grow in sales and attract more households, Cheetos needed to get beyond this narrow occasion and unlock an insight relevant to more potential buyers. Something that would speak to Rejuveniles irrespective of their children or role as parents.

Audience research revealed a mindset inherent to the Cheetos buyer—the Rejuveniles. These are the practical jokers and prankers of life, always looking to mix life up.

From the way popcorn had been marketed by the dominant players, it seemed that what the popcorn audience wanted was the antithesis of Cheetos—a clean snack. But looking deeper at the popcorn audience, we found that 56% of popcorn buyers shared the Rejuvenile mindset. No one was speaking to this group, which suggested an opportunity for Cheetos to get their attention by acting differently from the rest.

So we turned to our Rejuveniles to better understand what they love so much about Cheetos and noticed a consistent theme—messy fingertips, which get them out of boring, serious things like work, and chores.

Our strategy became clear: turn our perceived weakness (cheesy fingertips) into a major strength, a way for Rejuveniles to get out of “adulting.”

Strategically, we needed to turn our product weakness into an aspirational strength. So creatively, we leaned in to the power of the Cheetos dust. We brought the dust to life as a superpower that gets people out of monotony and into mischief.

Taking the brand back to the Super Bowl for the first time in 10 years, we teased our comeback by giving Cheetle some unexpected new meaning, revealing the true inspiration behind MC Hammer’s greatest hit, “U Can’t Touch This.” And on game day, we took this new meaning a step further, showing how Cheetle gives our hero a surprising superpower and excuse to get out of things since, well, he can’t touch anything.

Our TV campaign was surrounded by an integrated social campaign that officially named and claimed the term Cheetle, leveraging our mischievous mascot, Chester, and launching a Cheetle finger detector that unlocks exclusive digital content.

The campaign blasted through its sales KPIs, more than doubling forecasted sales from $40M to $100M (250% to plan) and becoming the best-settling Frito-Lay innovation in 2020—and the best innovation for the Cheetos brand in over a decade.

The campaign successfully disrupted the popcorn subcategory, too, stealing significant share while also growing the entire subcategory, driving 75% of ready-to-eat popcorn growth in 2020.

These successes had a delicious halo effect on the rest of the Cheetos brand, reviving its growth by bringing 1.75M new households into it, leading to a 1.4 pt. lift in household penetration, ultimately attracting more new households than any other new product in the brand’s recent history.