- 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 a clumsy audition process for the campaign, in addition to social content where regular consumers encounter the undead appendage causing mischief around town.
- The concept was delivered to life as Thing broke out of an LED billboard in Times Square to trace 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.”
Move over, Chester Cheetah: Cheetos is making the most of the hype across the return of “Wednesday,” a spinoff of “The Addams Family” that has develop into a Gen Z hit, with a campaign that unites Thing with its long-running give attention to cheetle, or the orange cheese dust that builds up on one’s finger suggestions when eating the snack. The second season of the show starring Jenna Ortega lands in two installments, the primary premiering Aug. 6.
Out-of-home activations in New York this week saw Thing break free from a Cheetos placement to trace 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 peak of tourist season.
Social videos included in the campaign emulate the sensation of user-generated content as on a regular basis 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 got here 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,” in accordance with Tina Mahal, senior vp of selling 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 firms 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’s heading in the right direction to roughly double its promoting revenue this yr, though it doesn’t break out specific figures for the segment.
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