Dive Brief:
- Cheetos is tapping into excitement for the return of Netflix’s “Wednesday” by enlisting Thing, a skittering disembodied hand from the streaming series, as a spokescharacter, per news shared with Marketing Dive.
- Thing, billed as a “spokeshand” in press materials, appears in a new spot depicting an awkward audition process for the campaign, as well as social content where regular consumers encounter the undead appendage causing mischief around the city.
- The concept was brought to life as Thing broke out of an LED billboard in Times Square to track Cheeto dust, or “cheetle,” across out-of-home ads from other brands like Gatorade and Spotify. The marketing ties into a new limited-time product, Cheetos Flamin’ Hot Fiery Skulls, with motifs inspired by “Wednesday.”
Dive Insight:
Move over, Chester Cheetah: Cheetos is taking advantage of the hype around the return of “Wednesday,” a spinoff of “The Addams Family” that has become a Gen Z hit, with a campaign that unites Thing with its long-running focus on cheetle, or the orange cheese dust that builds up on one’s finger tips when eating the snack. The second season of the show starring Jenna Ortega lands in two installments, the first premiering Aug. 6.
Out-of-home activations in New York this week saw Thing break free from a Cheetos placement to track cheetle around Times Square, defacing billboards for other brands like Gatorade (also owned by PepsiCo). The appendage’s trail of fingerprints and graffiti similarly appeared across real-world elements in the neighborhood like taxis, sidewalks, newsstands and a Statue of Liberty model to stoke consumer intrigue at the height of tourist season.
Social videos included in the campaign emulate the feeling of user-generated content as everyday people follow Cheetos-coded clues left around their apartments and on the streets only to receive a jump scare when Thing suddenly appears and wreaks havoc. An ad offers a fictional account of how the partnership came together as Thing struggles through an audition that requires expressing different emotions and eventually attacks a clueless casting director who asks for a smile.
Cheetos identified overlap between its fans and the “outcasts” who enjoy “Wednesday,” according to Tina Mahal, senior vice president of marketing at PepsiCo Foods U.S. To that end, the marketer is releasing a limited-edition variant of its popular Flamin’ Hot snack that features skull-shaped puffs and Thing on the front of the pack. “Wednesday” lead Ortega has previously appeared in a Super Bowl campaign for sister Frito-Lay brand Doritos.
More companies running co-branded campaigns with Netflix speaks to the streamer’s growing stature in adland. Other recent collaborations include Domino’s work with “Squid Game,” a dystopian South Korean thriller, around its Emergency Pizza promotions.
Consumers are also buying into the streamer’s ad-supported tier, which launched in 2022 and is shifting to an in-house ad-tech stack. Netflix in an earnings report last week said it is on track to roughly double its advertising revenue this year, though it does not break out specific figures for the segment.
