Cheetos

The Objective

That's so Cheetos!

Cheetos® sought to connect and reinforce its presence among a young audience. The goal, in short, was to increase brand awareness in an authentic way in the market. For that, they had in their hands, ready, a main message - "Isso é muito Cheetos!", or "That's so Cheetos!" - and a promotional video starring a great Brazilian singer. How to use this to engage audience on TikTok?

The Solution

Authentic content to connect with the community

The answer lay in Branded Mission, a new TikTok feature focused on creating authentic content for brands. A Branded Mission strategy helps increase audience engagement in campaigns because it lets any creator produce videos to participate in the mission in exchange for a reward. Creators just need to follow the rules of the game that the company sets itself, such as using a specific song or a Branded Effect.

In the case of Cheetos®, the creators needed to use the music from the campaign's main clip, with the chorus "When Cheetos Passes, I Follow the Smell". The best videos made by TikTok creators would be selected by the company and get a boost on TikTok to get more views and reach more people.

Publicity for the campaign began with a TopView ad, a reservation format that places the brand at the top of TikTok's For You feed. Cheetos® promoted, for a day, the main video of the action, in which the singer eats the snack and dances the step in the chorus of the song, referring to a famous meme of the artist. With all the strength of humor videos on TikTok, the brand had a potential new meme on its hands.

The ad was followed by ads in the auction-based One-Day Max format. It places ads right after the first three organic videos in the feed. The content was targeted at people interested in food, drink and entertainment, ages 18-34. Cheetos® also leveraged videos made by creators such as @isaias @laddynada, @preta.hi, @kenyaborgess and @camilapudim and promoted content made for the Branded Mission by the community. Thus, it increased the reach to amplify the message in an authentic way on TikTok.

Finally, to analyze the impact of the campaign, the company carried out a brand lift study, which assesses brand perception. It works like this: within the target audience of the action, two groups are created, a test group (which sees the ads) and a control group (which does not see the ads).

At the end of the campaign, a questionnaire is sent to people from both groups, asking, for example, if they remember seeing the brand on TikTok recently. The idea is simple: compare responses and measure variance against different metrics like ad recall and brand awareness.

The Results

More than a thousand videos and brand success

The Branded Mission brought the engagement that Cheetos® wanted with the campaign. In total, in 24 days, creators produced more than 1,000 videos, with 92.4% of them relevant to the mission – containing the music and conveying the message that the brand wanted.

In addition, the format combined with the media strategy and the work of the creators helped to reinforce the hashtag #IssoÉMuitoCheetos and bring excellent brand results. In ad recall, Cheetos® achieved a 19.5%* lift, surpassing the brand's best to date achieved in a Hashtag Challenge campaign. In brand awareness, the jump was 15%**, one of the highest ever achieved by Cheetos® on TikTok.

(*) That is, the number of people in the test group who said they remembered brand ads on TikTok was 19.5 percentage points higher than the number in the control group.

(**) That is, the number of people in the test group who said they recognized the brand was 15 percentage points higher than the number in the control group.