What happens when 99% of snackers refuse to put down their Cheetos? This Cheetos – Other Hand (Case Study) unpacks how Frito-Lay and Goodby Silverstein & Partners turned orange “Cheetle” dust into a nationwide physical comedy platform – generating 2.2B impressions and selling 5M additional bags.
Background
Over the past several years, the salty and savory snack aisle has grown fiercely fragmented. A wave of challenger brands has entered the market, tempting Gen Z and millennial shoppers with complex flavor profiles, tiered heat levels, and better-for-you nutritional positioning. As a legacy Frito-Lay powerhouse, Cheetos needed a fresh strategic catalyst to defend its cultural edge and retail dominance.
The core marketing challenge was clear: how could Cheetos reinvigorate its five-year-running “It’s a Cheetos Thing” brand platform and maintain top-of-mind awareness inside an increasingly crowded snacking landscape?
Creative Idea
Created in partnership with creative agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), the Cheetos Other Hand campaign emerged from a deceptively simple observational study of hundreds of real snackers: 99% of people eat Cheetos using their dominant hand.
For almost any other snack brand, that behavioral quirk would be an irrelevant footnote. For Cheetos, however, it changes everything. Because eating Cheetos coats the user’s primary fingers in iconic, bright-orange cheese dust – officially dubbed Cheetle – their most capable hand is effectively taken out of commission. Rather than wiping their fingers clean or putting the bag down, fans stubbornly attempt to handle the rest of their daily lives using their clumsy, non-dominant “other hand.”
Building an entire 360-degree universe around this physical comedy, Cheetos – Other Hand spotlighted the hilarious everyday disasters that unfold when people across every profession refuse to pause their snacking. Beyond celebrating a distinctive brand asset, the campaign underscored a universal fan truth: Cheetos lovers prioritize eating Cheetos over everything else – even when it leads to total chaos.
Insights & Strategy
Consumer research into the ritual of eating Cheetos revealed a consistent hierarchy of priorities. Whether folding laundry, finishing homework, or performing skilled professional duties, fans routinely relegate important tasks to their non-dominant hand just so their dominant fingers can remain covered in delicious Cheetle uninterrupted.
While snackers spend plenty of time deciding which snack to buy, almost nobody stops to consciously examine how they physically eat it. Anchoring the strategy around the headline statistic – “99% of people eat Cheetos with their dominant hand” – flipped consumer self-awareness into an instant brand trigger.
The strategic question driving the Cheetos – Other Hand (Case Study) was straightforward: what if making people notice which hand they eat Cheetos with could make them crave a bag right now? By turning messy, non-dominant-hand mistakes into an unmistakable visual shorthand for Cheetle, the brand owned every clumsy moment in pop culture.
Execution
Executed as a fully integrated, multi-channel ecosystem, every single touchpoint followed the recurring narrative formula: “99% of people eat Cheetos with their dominant hand. Even…” – demonstrating how the insight disrupts everyone from local barbers, surgeons, and typographers to NBA champion Jamal Murray.
- Broadcast & Social Hero Films: The campaign kicked off with comedic television spots illustrating the chaos that ensues when barbers, courtroom sketch artists, cake decorators, dart players, and high-fiving sports fans refuse to stop eating Cheetos with their primary hand – alongside a partnership featuring Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray bricking left-handed shots on the court while his right hand stays buried in a bag of Cheetos.
- Botched Print & OOH Craft: Extending the joke into static media, Cheetos commissioned illustrators, calligraphers, commercial photographers, ad copywriters, and even physical billboard installers to execute their craft using only their non-dominant hands – resulting in hilariously crooked posters, blurry product shots, typo-riddled headlines, and upside-down billboards.
- High-Impact NYC & Las Vegas Sphere Stunts: In New York City, Cheetos staged a viral physical stunt featuring a car crashed awkwardly into a street-level billboard – as if the driver had attempted to parallel park with their other hand – catching organic amplification from cultural meme giants like @WhatIsNewYork. In Las Vegas, Cheetos hijacked the iconic Exosphere (The Sphere), making the multi-million-dollar LED landmark appear “broken” and glitching for the very first time, as though its control-room operator were pressing buttons with their non-dominant hand.
- “Other Hand Font” & Chrome Extension: Collaborating with professional font designers who drew every letterform using their non-dominant hand, Cheetos released the Other Hand Font – the first typeface engineered entirely around Cheetle-induced clumsiness. Thousands of users downloaded the font package, while a custom Google Chrome Extension allowed fans to convert all text across the entire internet into the shaky, crooked typeface – winning the Design Grand Prix at the 2024 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
- Limited-Edition “Other Hand” Packaging: To bring the disruption directly to grocery aisles, Cheetos produced a limited-edition run of Cheetos bags designed entirely with the packaging designer’s non-dominant hand, dropping the crooked bags in select retail stores nationwide and seeding them with creators and superfans.
Results
The Cheetos – Other Hand (Case Study) evolved from a clever behavioral observation into a multi-year brand platform, delivering extraordinary cultural traction, creative acclaim, and retail velocity:
Cultural Reach & Brand Equity
- 2.2 billion+ earned and social impressions generated worldwide across hundreds of mainstream news, business, and pop-culture outlets, including Fast Company and TMZ.
- 100% positive-to-neutral brand sentiment across social and media monitoring.
- +11.8 percentage point lift in campaign social awareness across Meta platforms.
- Global Creative Honors: Swept international award shows, headlined by the Design Grand Prix at Cannes Lions for Other Hand Font.
Commercial & Retail Growth
- 5,000,000 additional bags of core Cheetos sold during the campaign window compared to the prior period.
- Outperformed a Declining Category: Even as the broader savory-snack category contracted by –0.58% and faced an influx of new competitor launches, Cheetos expanded both unit volume and overall category market share – proving that reminding people how they eat Cheetos directly compels them to buy more Cheetos.
Case Film
Credits
- Client: PepsiCo
- Brand: Cheetos
- Advertising Agency: Goodby Silverstein & Partners San Francisco
- Production Company: Kollectiff; dummy.
- Post Production Company: Omnicom Production; Arcade Edit; Company 3; The Mill; Hey Presto!
- Sound Mix: Sonic Union
- Media Agency: OMD; VaynerMedia
- Media Placement: Red Rock Outdoor
- Media Planning: Outdoor Media Group
- PR Agency: Ketchum