Cheetos wanted to inspire Gen Z audiences to use the brand in a new way—as a main ingredient in holiday recipes. In order to break through during a crowded time to a jaded audience with a weird ask, we had to do something unexpected.

Diving into social, we saw that Gen Z were already crushing up Cheetos to add to their meals. So, what better way to get more people to adopt this trend than by making it easier for them to actually make it?

Introducing the Cheetos Duster—the first-ever blender designed specifically to grind Cheetos into the perfect ingredient. We designed and developed the Duster and bundled it with Cheetos products to sell on Amazon on Black Friday. To get the word out, we created a tongue-in-cheek 90 second infomercial, along with six original recipe videos, and cutdowns touting the wonders of “cheerleading” that drove viewers to two bespoke landing pages on Amazon.

The Cheetos Duster sold out within 90 minutes, garnering 12.5B earned impressions, getting picked up by everyone from Forbes, Food & Wine, and Rolling Stone to North Dakota local news. It’s even on sale on eBay for 10x the original price!

For round two, we made and sold even more Dusters (30K) and added a custom Amazon box sent to 750k doorsteps across America, an Alexa skill that guided you through recipes straight to purchase, an Amazon Live cooking show featuring celebrity chef, Salt Hank, and many, many more ad placements.