The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2024–2025
Cheetos turns snack dust into comedy — 1.5B impressions, AAF Best of Show
99% of people snack with their dominant hand, so Cheetos built comedy around the 'other hand' — films, OOH stunts and a wonky font drawn with the wrong hand.
Cheetos · Frito-Lay North America (PepsiCo) · Goodby Silverstein & Partners
What it had to solve
Cheetos needed to breathe new life into its long-running 'It's a Cheetos Thing' platform and stay top of mind in the crowded snack market. The insight: 99% of people eat Cheetos with their dominant hand, leaving the other hand to handle everyday life — with ridiculous results.
How it works
The crowded snack market was squeezing Cheetos, and the brand's long-running 'It's a Cheetos Thing' platform needed fresh energy. The insight: 99% of people eat Cheetos with their dominant hand, covering it in Cheetle dust — so everything else in life gets done with the 'other hand,' with comically bad results.
Goodby Silverstein & Partners turned that truth into an integrated platform. Five digital films showed a baker ruining a cake, a sketch artist drawing badly and a football player missing a pass; outdoor stunts included a New York Times ad filled with intentional typos and a badly parked car; NBA star Jamal Murray appeared missing high-fives with his Cheetos hand.
On National Handwriting Day 2025 the campaign released Other Hand Font — a typeface literally drawn by the designers using their non-dominant hands, free to download at Cheetos.com, with a browser plug-in that replaces any website's font. Fans could use it anywhere, turning a snacking habit into shareable creativity.
The platform earned 1.5 billion impressions, an 11.8-point awareness lift, 100% positive sentiment and more than five million bags sold. It won Best of Show at the 2025 American Advertising Awards (Cheetos' second in three years), One Show 2025 Best of Discipline for Integrated/Omnichannel, and two Bronze Lions at Cannes 2025.
Why it lands
- It owned the product's 'flaw' — orange fingers — instead of pretending it didn't exist.
- The 99% insight was a real, quantified consumer truth, not an invented scenario.
- Each execution (films, OOH, font) told the same joke in a different medium.
- The free font and browser plug-in gave fans a tool, so the campaign lived beyond media.
- Humor and self-deprecation made a snack brand culturally useful instead of just noisy.
What it did
The campaign earned 1.5 billion impressions, an 11.8-point awareness lift and 100% positive sentiment, and sold over 5 million bags. It won AAF Best of Show 2025 (Cheetos' second in three years), One Show 2025 Best of Discipline for Integrated/Omnichannel, and two Cannes Lions 2025 Bronze Lions.
What you can take
A 'flaw' can be the brand: instead of hiding the orange dust, Cheetos turned the one-handed mess into a shareable platform — and a downloadable font made the ad an owned tool.
Since then
The Other Hand Font extended the campaign beyond media: it was free to download at Cheetos.com, usable in documents and designs, and accompanied by a browser plug-in that replaced any website's typeface — turning every user's screen into an ad. Ads of the World counted celebrity cameos (NBA champion Jamal Murray), five digital films, typo-filled print and a stunt car as executions under the platform. The work kept winning: AAF Best of Show at the 2025 American Advertising Awards, One Show 2025 Best of Discipline (Integrated/Omnichannel), and two Bronze Lions at Cannes 2025.
Sources
- Cheetos: Other Hand (campaign)
- Designing an 'Epically Stupid' Font with 1 Hand in a Bag of Cheetos
- Goodby Silverstein & Partners Wins 'Best of Show' at 2025 AAF American Advertising Awards
- Campañas globales de PepsiCo: Flamin' Hot, Cheetos y Pepsi activan insights con impacto
- Three APAC Agencies Win Best of Discipline at One Show 2025
- Cheetos — Other Hand (official campaign page)
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