Behind the Puff: How We brought the Viral Cheetos Puff Auction to Life
We recently caught up with our Cheetos #client team to break down how they moved with incredible speed and creativity to bring to life the viral Cheetos Puff Auction which was a play on the banana taped to a wall that sold at auction for $6.2 million. Check out what they had to say about the project!
How did the idea for this project first come up??
We have an ongoing challenge to create visibility for the Cheetos brand, so we are constantly monitoring social media and pop culture news to see what’s trending and how Cheetos can playfully insert itself.
With everything we do, we want to leave people saying, “I can’t believe Cheetos did that.”
For this opportunity specifically, everyone was talking about the banana duct taped to a wall that sold for $6.2 million at auction. We thought it was insane…but also…that it kind of looked like a Cheetos Puff, so we knew we had to do something to hijack this cultural moment. And fast.?
What was the strategy behind this project??
We thought that this was an interesting moment to quickly and cost-effectively get some buzz for Cheetos – both with earned and social media. It was also a natural and simple way to tap into a very odd and topical cultural moment. So, we did just that, putting a single Cheetos Puff taped to a wall up for auction within 24 hours of the banana news story.?
How was the team able to activate so quickly to bring this to life??
Once the idea was brought forth, we instantly got alignment from everyone internally to do this.?
The creative team quickly created an asset to mimic the banana art, featuring a Cheetos Puff duct-taped to a wall with cheesy fingerprints to illustrate “Cheetle?,” the delicious orange dust that Cheetos is famous for.
As quickly as Ketchum crafted their own spin on the iconic artwork, the brand went live on eBay offering the average, Cheetos-loving consumer an easy way to engage with the cultural moment.
The team had no time for exclusives, so the media team pitched ad and marketing outlets, Gen Z-oriented titles and top-tier food and lifestyle publications. Trade outlets like Ad Age picked up the story early, but when USA TODAY covered the tongue-in-cheek auction, the stunt truly took off. Syndication of that article sparked the attention of hosts on local broadcast news outlets all over the country, who wove it into their banter. Visibility via earned media was supplemented by a simple yet effective socially driven launch: a single post on Instagram, a solitary picture of the artwork, and an eBay link where fans could place their bids.
How did you partner with the client to develop this project??
We presented the idea to our client and it was almost an immediate “yes.” They were able to align on internal approvals very quickly and helped us route things seamlessly through internal stakeholders (including marketing and legal) and connect the dots across PR and social to get the auction live and materials finalized ASAP.
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Were there any roadblocks and how did you overcome them??
The biggest challenge was time. The team had to act fast while the duct-taped banana was still top of mind with consumers and the talk of morning news hosts, and, before other brands beat Cheetos to the punch.
All within a span of 12 hours, Ketchum needed to create the artwork, photograph it, get the idea approved by internal stakeholders including marketing and legal, and put the Cheetos Puff up for auction. Plus, as soon as the auction went live, the media relations and social media teams needed to act fast to amplify the auction and get bids flowing in. And they did just that.
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How did your team's relationship with the client make this possible? it Did it change your relationship with the client??
This was not only an answer to the ongoing assignment of creating visibility for the Cheetos brand, but also a singular opportunity to inject spontaneous Cheetos mischief into the pop culture moments its fans eat up. Because we have a longstanding relationship with our Cheetos clients, we were able to work fast, and they were on board with taking a creative risk – strengthening relationships all around and building trust.
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Tell us about the results and how the client felt about them?
From idea to auction in under 24 hours — with zero dollars spent on celebrities, influencers or social media boosts, and armed with nothing but a Cheetos Puff and a piece of duct tape — “Mischief” made the rounds:
- Includes two by USA Today, Yahoo! Entertainment, MSN, and CNBC Money Minute
- Broadcast and radio included segments on local NBC, CBS and Fox affiliates
How will your team use what you learned from this viral campaign moving forward??
What #client PepsiCo and our Ketchum team pulled off was agile and creative PR done right: A quick-turn culture hack, costing no more than the price of a piece of duct tape and a Cheetos Puff. Something this culturally relevant didn’t just break through by itself, though – it needed earned. It might have just been a playful social post if it wasn’t for some really strong earned coverage, specifically in USA Today, that drove dialogue and created buzz.
Also, when it’s agile like this, it’s very much okay if you don’t have all the answers or mitigate every last risk before going live. For example, there were a few flags raised by brand and agency legal teams in the very short period of time, which if we stopped to solve for them in that moment, would have completely killed the responsiveness necessary for success.
Instead, we assessed that nothing posed a true brand risk, and moved forward, successfully launching ourselves into the cultural dialogue. Put another way, delay can be deadly, so properly assessing your risk tolerance and moving forward with a “what could go right” attitude/approach is the difference between why we’re talking about a highly successful cultural hijack instead of wistfully looking back at what might have been.