Cheetos Classic Reaps the Creative Dividend

We talk a lot at System1 about distinctive assets – the logos, colours, characters and sounds that can instantly bring a brand to mind, which become vital ingredients in its creative recipes. We could all name mascots or slogans which brands have turned into instantly recognisable assets. What’s a true marketing flex is taking something people don’t like about your brand and turn it into a brilliant asset. That requires real creativity.

So for this week’s Ad Of The Week we’re indulging in a flashback to a 5-year-old modern classic which did exactly that – Cheetos’ “Can’t Touch This” commercial from 2020 starring a Cheetos eater and the 90s rap superstar MC Hammer. The ad aired during the Super Bowl and was an instant hit. A guy holding a pack of Cheetos meets a series of people asking for help – from lifting a couch to holding a friends’ baby. His reply? Sheepishly holding up his Cheeto dust covered hand while MC Hammer crops up rapping “Can’t touch this”.

We tested the Cheetos ad during the Super Bowl and it performed very strongly. We then tested it again, a couple of months later, in a world transformed by COVID-19 lockdowns. Despite the extreme shift in global mood, the Cheetos commercial was still a 5-Star smash, scoring 5.1-Stars on our Test Your Ad platform, predicting exceptional potential for long-term effectiveness.

Several years on, that prediction has proved true. The brand didn’t leave the “Cheeto fingers” motif to just one great ad, they returned to it and build on it over the intervening years, until they managed to win an Effie award for effectiveness in 2024 for the latest wild execution in the campaign, a “Cheetos Duster” device which turns cheetos into a Cheeto dust condiment. What was once a minor but well known irritant for Cheetos eaters has become the ironic centerpiece of their advertising. For Cheetos and agency Goodby Silverstein And Partners (who created the MC Hammer ad) it’s been a triumphant campaign.

So why are we talking about it now? Because the Effie-winning Cheeto fingers campaign is such a great example of many of the things we’re talking about in an upcoming whitepaper we’ve written alongside Effie, The Creative Dividend. It combines the Effie Case Library with our Test Your Ad database for the first time, analysing over 1,250 advertising outcomes, accounting for more than $140bn of market share. The aim is simple but huge: to give marketers confidence in creativity, and move advertising once and for all from a cost to an investment on balance sheets. Check out the recent webinar with System1’s Andrew Tindall and marketing legend Mark Ritson to learn more.

At the centre of The Creative Dividend is the “Creativity Stack”, a set of five evidence-based creative principles for lasting, profitable advertising. The brilliant Cheetos campaign illustrates many of them. For one thing, it’s enormously entertaining – you don’t get a 5-Star score on Super Bowl night without making your audience feel something, and Cheetos made viewers laugh with sky-high happiness responses. It also avoids paying the “cost of dull” – a few viewers were grossed out by the Cheeto fingers, but that just adds to the intensity of response and is ultimately less costly for marketers than forgettable neutrality.

Most of all, though, the Cheetos campaign is a superior example of creative consistency – building a long-term campaign around an asset or idea and staying the course, letting the creative platform build in effectiveness as it becomes more familiar. Creative consistency is at the top of the creativity stack – nail it and you’re well on the way to giving your advertising the other kind of golden touch.