Cheez-Its Have Fun With College Football

Want to stay ahead of the latest winning innovation trends? Innovation of the Week, powered by System1’s Test Your Innovation testing, is your regular spotlight on the newest concepts hitting the market.

With the college football season starting, Cheez-Its’ cheeky new ad takes a provocative look at a question that’s on a lot of fans’ minds right now – how old is too old to play college football? Players at college level are trending older, and in 2024 one athlete qualified for a record-breaking ninth time. That’s the inspiration for Cheez-Its “9th Year Seniors” ad – and they really do mean senior, with an octogenarian player ready to kick some ass on the field.

The ad is part of Cheez-Its’ ongoing campaign with BBDO New York, the “College Couch Committee”, a group of fans pronouncing on matters of football from the couch, with Cheez-Its to hand. An animated Cheez-It mascot also takes part, pointing out that aging only makes the players “cheesier, saltier and yummier”. The verdict: let the old guy play.

Cheez-Its pack a lot into a short space here, with not one of the spot’s 16 seconds wasted. It’s a confident, quick-fire and very funny ad that also works as a conversation starter about an issue football fans have plenty of opinions about. Taking a tongue-in-cheek stand on a subject like 9th-year seniors positions Cheez-Its as a brand that understands fan culture, and can have some fun with it too.

The “Committee” angle structures the ad and also allows for plenty of dialogue and non verbal interplay, important sources of the connection and ‘between-ness’ that creates emotional impact in an ad. The Committee is an example of a ‘Scenario’ Fluent Device – a repeating narrative construct that drives the creative in an ad. Like the more common ‘Character’ Fluent Device this works by creating consistency that builds familiarity and creates an expectation of entertainment.

Our Test Your Ad report shows the result of this approach – the ad is a huge success, and with a general audience, not even just among football fans. The ad gets Exceptional scores for both short-term Spike Rating and fast recognition Brand Fluency, and a long-term Star Rating than puts it in the top 11% of all US savory snack ads.

These are excellent scores for a 15-second ad that’s tied to a specific tournament – what could have shown niche appeal in fact has general effectiveness for Cheez-Its. Strong branding from the beginning and a punchline viewers who haven’t followed the specific 9th year senior story can understand make the ad a success, and show that being funny and having a point of view are usually strong commercial plays.