• by Erik Oster , April 18, 2024

Cheetos continues its marketing strategy of focusing on the flavorful residue the cheesy snack leaves behind in a new campaign focused on the results of snackers taking on tasks one-handed.

Purportedly based on the finding that 99% of Cheetos consumers eat the snack with their dominant hand, the “Other Hand” campaign imagines a series of scenarios resulting from the sloppiness stemming from people attempting a variety of tasks with their non-dominant hand. The Frito-Lay brand teamed up with Denver Nuggets point guard and 2023 NBA Champion Jamal Murray for an ad in which he misses the high fives he attempts with his “other hand.”

"Cheetos fans everywhere know the feeling when they need to get things done but their fingers are covered in that beloved orange Cheetle dust," PepsiCo Foods North America senior vice president of marketing Tina Mahal said in a statement, referring to the term the brand coined for the dusty, orange residue left on fingers from eating the snack in an earlier campaign.

The spot starring Murray is part of a series of five digital video ads for the campaign, with others focusing on the phenomenon’s impact on everything from baking a cake and playing football, to forensic sketching, and plastic surgery. “Other Hand” also includes a series of imaginative OOH and print activations illustrating other mishaps from a botched parking job in New York City, in front of an explanatory billboard, as well as a New York Times print ad riddled with grammatical errors. Another OOH activation features a large sloppy sketch of the brand’s mascot on the side of a building, with the explanation that the artist was using their “other hand.”

It all makes for a very adaptable concept, and Cheetos  is inviting fans to share their own “Other Hand’ mishaps on social media, using the hashtag “#CheetosOtherHand.”