Cheetos: Cheetos Museum
Cheetos wanted to drive sales and social engagement by making the product more than just a snack. Goodby Silverstein & Partners San Francisco was tasked with finding a way to get people to look closer at their Cheetos and spend more time with the brand, targeting a broad audience of snackers who enjoy lighthearted, participatory internet culture.
Creative Idea
Reframed accidental snack shapes as fine art to turn eating into a treasure hunt.
Cheetos transformed the accidental shapes of its snacks into a high - art museum experience, incentivizing fans to find and submit unique pieces for a massive cash prize, turning a mindless eating habit into a nationwide treasure hunt.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
A snack brand with a product known for its infinite, unpredictable, and often weirdly recognizable shapes.
Category
Snack brands typically focus on flavor, crunch, and mindless consumption rather than the visual form of the product.
Customer
People naturally enjoy finding patterns in random objects and love the thrill of a low - effort, high - reward hunt.
Culture
The internet's obsession with weird eBay finds and the democratization of art through social media sharing.
Company
A snack brand with a product known for its infinite, unpredictable, and often weirdly recognizable shapes.
Category
Snack brands typically focus on flavor, crunch, and mindless consumption rather than the visual form of the product.
Strategy:
Gamify product consumption by reframing physical inconsistencies as rare, collectible artifacts with high social and financial value.
Customer
People naturally enjoy finding patterns in random objects and love the thrill of a low - effort, high - reward hunt.
Culture
The internet's obsession with weird eBay finds and the democratization of art through social media sharing.
Strategy:
Gamify product consumption by reframing physical inconsistencies as rare, collectible artifacts with high social and financial value.
Results
The campaign was a massive success, resulting in 127,717 Cheetos submitted by fans. It achieved the brand's highest sales week ever. A 'Harambe-shaped' Cheeto famously sold on eBay for nearly $100,000. The campaign was featured on major news outlets and late-night shows, including The Today Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. It was recognized as the most successful social campaign in Cheetos history.
127,717
Cheetos submitted
$100,000
highest eBay sale for a single Cheeto
Highest ever
brand sales week
Strategy Technique
Turn Users Into the Story
By crowdsourcing the art from the audience, Cheetos turned every bag into a potential discovery, making the consumer's imagination and participation the central narrative of the campaign.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Amplify the Small
The campaign takes a tiny, overlooked detail - the irregular shape of an individual Cheeto - and elevates it to the status of fine art through a museum - style presentation and high - stakes rewards.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
The campaign's brilliance lies in its ability to turn a simple, relatable observation into a massive, participatory cultural event through clever art direction and strategic media planning.
The visual framing of Cheetos as high-art sculptures in a museum setting is the core creative engine that makes the campaign work.
The seamless integration of social media, online films, a physical exhibit, and earned media on major talk shows created a massive, unavoidable cultural presence.
The synergy between the elevated art direction and the widespread media coverage transformed a simple snack into a national conversation.
