Cheetos, “Can’t Touch This”

This example is yet another ad that aired during a Super Bowl, arguably the biggest advertising platform for U.S. advertisers each year. Nailing a funny ad can be difficult, but when done properly, it can help brands make a “best ads of the big game” list.

Anyone who’s eaten Cheetos knows that the orange dust is sure to cake their fingers – it’s unavoidable. Cheetos have used their ads to turn what could have been an offputting element of the product into one of its best distinctive assets, with plenty of entertaining ads dealing with those orange fingers.

“Can’t Touch This” introduces a new Cheetos offering, its popcorn, and showcases a man who can’t help his boss, friends, workout buddy or colleagues with hands-on tasks like moving and a trust fall because he’s got cheesy fingers. It’s a funny scenario but the stroke of surreal genius is to use MC Hammer’s classic “U Can’t Touch This”, with the real MC Hammer popping up randomly during the ad to sing the hook. It has that unexpected quality that drives many of the best funny ads.

Bringing all of this together helps Cheetos score achieve 4.8-Stars, the brand’s highest-ranking ad in System1’s database.